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THE  COMING  GREED 


BY 


PARLEY  PAUL  WOMER 

Author  of  "The  Relation  of  Healing  to  Law, 
**  A  Valid  Religion  for  the  Times'* 


BOSTON 

SHERMAN,  FRENCH  ^  COMPANY 

1911 


.-"^s 


Si" 


"V. 


Copyright,   1910 
Sherman,  French  &  Company 


TO  THE 
DANFORTH  CONGREGATIONAL  CHURCH 

OF  SYRACUSE,  NEW  YORK 
IN  APPRECIATION  OF  THE  FRIENDSHIPS 
THAT     WERE     MADE      DURING     FOUR 
YEARS        OF         PASTORAL         SERVICE 

"Follow  Light,  and  do  the  right — for  man  can 

half  control  his  doom — 
Till  you  find  the  deathless  Angel  seated  in  the 

vacant  tomb. 
Forward  let  the  stormy  moment  fly  and  mingle 

with  the  Past. 
I  that  loathed  have  come  to  love  Him.     Love 

will  conquer  at  the  last.*' 


.'?04i  .57 


PREFACE 

The  question  as  to  whether  Christianity 
should  be  considered  primarily  a  system  of 
doctrine,  or  a  way  of  life,  is  of  fundamental 
importance.  For  centuries  the  former  idea  has 
overwhelmingly  predominated.  Life  has  been 
subordinated  to  dogma.  The  effort  of  the 
church  has  been  to  crowd  the  eternal  truths 
of  the  Gospel  into  narrow  and  unelastic  creedal 
statements,  and  to  make  assent  to  these  the 
condition  of  its  fellowship.  This  is  the  dog- 
matic ideal  of  church  life  which  has  become 
so  strongly  intrenched  in  the  thinking  of  many 
Christians  that  it  seems  to  them  like  treachery 
to  the  cause  of  Christ  even  to  call  it  into 
question. 

One  of  the  most  significant  features  of  the 
present  religious  situation  is  the  growing  dis- 
content with  the  dogmatic  ideal  of  church  life. 
The  feeling  is  wide  spread  that  the  creeds, 
which  in  the  historic  orthodox  churches  stand 
for  Christianity,  are  in  their  present  form 
the  survival  of  a  thought  world  which  has  been 
outgrown,  and  that  they  are  consequently  a 
hinderance  to  faith  rather  than  its  bulwark. 

The  writer  profoundly  sympathizes  with 
this  feeling.  He  believes  that  the  dogmatic 
ideal  has  been  a  source  of  great  hurt  to  the 
church,  that  it  has  been  the  chief  cause  of 
our   endless   divisions,   that   sectarianism   is   to 


PREFACE 

a  very  great  extent  its  product,  and  that  it 
will  have  to  be  abandoned  before  there  can  be 
that  unity  of  believers  that  Jesus  had  in  mind 
when  He  prayed  that  the  disciples  might  be 
one  with  Him  even  as  He  and  the  Father  are 
one. 

To  many  churches  which  have  inherited 
complex  and  elaborate  creeds,  the  difficulty 
seems  to  lie  in  their  complexity  and  elaborate- 
ness, and  hence  the  movement  in  not  a  few 
cases  that  looks  toward  reduction  and  simpli- 
fication. However,  it  is  not  merely  the  simpli- 
fication of  the  dogmatic  ideal  as  a  basis  of 
church  life  that  is  needed,  but  its  absolute  sur- 
render. It  must  be  remembered  that  the 
church  began  without  the  dogmatic  formulas 
and  it  has  no  more  need  of  them  now  than 
it  had  in  the  beginning. 

The  ide^  of  Christianity  as  a  way  of  life, 
the  spirit  of  which  is  love,  rather  than  as 
a  system  of  theological  and  philosophic  doc- 
trine, is  one  that  appeals  to  the  writer  with 
great  force,  and  in  the  pages  which  follow 
an  effort  has  been  made  to  set  forth  this  idea 
as  the  basis  of  a  true  church  life.  The  move- 
ment for  Christian  unity  has  begun,  to  the 
careful  observer  it  is  evident  that  it  is  daily 
gathering  force,  and  it  seems  to  the  writer 
that  it  is  along  the  lines  here  indicated  that 
unity  is  destined  to  be  realized.  It  will  be 
noted   that   the   distinguishing   feature   of   the 


PREFACE 

coming  creed   is    its   emphasis   upon   unity   of 
spirit  rather  than  intellectual  statement  or  form. 

Parley  P.  Womer. 

Park  Congregational  Church, 
St.  Paul,  Nov.  15,  1910. 


I 

THE  DIFFERENCE  BETWEEN  A 
CHURCH  AND  A  SECT 


With  all  lowliness  and  meekness,  with  long 
suffering,  forbearing  one  another  in  love;  giving 
diligence  to  keep  the  unity  of  the  spirit  in  the  bond 
of  peace . "  —  Paul . 

**  Part  as  we  may  with  what  once  was  de- 
manded by  the  Church,  there  is  something — and 
that  too,  the  very  holiest  influence  of  life — ^that 
is  still  with  us;  and  this  residuary  truth,  this 
Divine  Spirit,  which  emerges  from  the  mixed  in- 
heritance of  Christendom,  when  all  that  is  per- 
ishable has  been  discharged,  does  but  own  its 
descent,  and  look  up  with  fitting  reverence  to  its 
fountain  head,  when  it  claims  the  name  of  Chris- 
tian . "  —  Martineau. 


THE     DIFFERENCE     BETWEEN     A 
CHURCH  AND  A  SECT 

That  there  is  'an  important  and  far-reach- 
ing distinction  to  be  drawn  between  a  church 
and  a  sect  has  not  hitherto  received  proper 
recognition.  Rehgious  sects  of  every  descrip- 
tion have  flourished  in  our  midst  and  each  has 
called  itself  a  church.  In  this  country  alone, 
according  to  a  recent  estimate,  there  are 
one  hundred  and  forty  different  branches 
of  the  church,  or  denominations,  most  of  which 
have  more  or  less  the  character  of  a  sect.  So 
little  insight,  in  fact,  has  characterized  our 
thinking  in  this  respect  that  sectarianism  has 
been  generally  accepted  as  a  substitute  for 
a  church  life. 

The  time  is  manifestly  ripe  for  a  rediscus- 
sion  of  this  whole  subject.  To  discerning 
minds  it  is  evident  that  sectarianism  has  nearly 
run  its  course.  There  are  many  indications 
both  within  and  without  the  various  religious 
bodies  which  clearly  show  that  a  church  life 
is  slowly  but  surely  rising  to  take  the  place 
of  the  sects. 

Broadly  speaking,  the  purpose  of  the  church 
is  to  give  organized  expression  to  the  religious 
life  that  has  its  source  in  the  Christian  revela- 
tion. The  character  of  the  church,  therefore, 
is  necessarily  determined  by  the  character  of 

1 


g'*'    '    'tlfiffi*  COMING  CREED 

the  revelation  in  which  it  originates.  So  far 
as  any  religious  body  shares  the  scope  and 
aims  of  the  Christian  revelation  and  gives 
expression  to  its  essential  spirit  it  may  be 
said  to  be  a  church.  When,  however,  the  spirit 
of  Christ  is  narrowed  down,  when  conditions 
of  membership  are  imposed  by  a  religious 
organization  that  limit  the  manifest  scope  and 
intentions  of  Jesus,  it  has  the  character  of 
a  sect. 

The  most  impressive  thing  about  the  religion 
of  Jesus  is  its  note  of  universality.  There  is 
nothing  about  it  that  is  merely  local.  It  be- 
longs to  no  particular  time,  place,  or  people, 
because  it  belongs  to  all  times,  places,  and 
peoples.  It  bursts  through  all  barriers  and 
limitations.  It  divests  itself  of  all  temporal 
and  local  color.  It  can  neither  be  said  to  be 
ancient  nor  modem.  It  is  not  Greek,  Jewish, 
Galilean,  Asiatic  or  European.  It  strikes 
the  note  of  universality,  by  adapting  itself  to 
every  sort  of  environment  without  losing  its 
essential  character;  by  clothing  itself  with  the 
peculiar  institutions,  philosophies,  customs  and 
points  of  view  that  have  characterized  the 
different  ages  to  which  it  has  been  addressed, 
without  becoming  identified  with  any  of  these; 
and  by  speaking  alike  to  the  heart  of  the  king 
and  the  servant,  the  philosopher  and  the 
peasant,  the  saint  and  the  sinner,  and  yet  al- 
ways remaining  essentially  the  same  in  spirit. 


CHURCH  AND  SECT  3 

The  Christian  religion  is  not  a  cult,  a  phi- 
losphy,  a  ritual,  nor  a  theology;  it  is  a  spirit 
of  life.  As  such  it  has  to  adopt  the  garb  of 
every  age  and  people  to  which  it  speaks,  but 
in  its  real  and  underlying  character,  it  is  al- 
ways different  from  the  garb  it  wears.  Other- 
wise it  would  not  be  the  universal  religion. 

Turning  to  almost  any  part  of  the  message 
of  Jesus,  we  are  impressed  with  the  idea  of 
comprehensiveness.  Take,  for  example.  His 
habitual  representation  of  God  as  Father,  and 
what  other  conception  of  the  Deity  is  so 
wonderfully  suited  to  the  needs  of  all  classes 
and  conditions  of  men?  Fatherhood  is  uni- 
versal, and  although  not  always  awakening  the 
same  tender  and  reverent  feelings  the  concep- 
tion, nevertheless,  is  sufficiently  understood  to 
bring  God  within  the  angle  of  each  man's  vision 
and  to  offer  a  proper  basis  for  a  worthy  inter- 
pretation of  His  character.  Take  also  the 
ideas  of  sin  and  forgiveness  and  note  how 
they  are  presented  by  Jesus  in  the  terms  of 
universal  experience.  The  sublime  picture 
drawn  with  such  skillful  touch  in  the  parable 
of  the  prodigal  spoke  not  only  to  the  heart 
of  the  Jew  of  Palestine,  who  lived  in  the  age 
of  Jesus,  but  it  speaks  to  the  sinner  and 
the  outcast  of  every  race  and  age.  Take 
Christ's  word  about  sympathy  and  service  as 
presented  in  the  story  of  the  good  Samaritan, 


4  THE  COMING  CREED 

about  purity  of  heart,  about  relief  from  weari- 
ness, worry  and  care,  about  the  duty  and 
the  joy  of  self-sacrifice,  or  about  the  endless 
life,  and  how  marvelously  they  all  appeal  to 
the  instincts  and  needs  of  the  common  heart! 
These  elements  and  principles  of  Christ's 
teaching,  selected  merely  at  random,  make  it 
evident  to  all  who  will  stop  to  reflect  upon 
them  that  the  Christian  message  in  its  essential 
and  underlying  character  is  universal.  As 
the  right  key  fits  all  the  wards  of  the  most 
complicated  lock,  so  does  the  Gospel  of  Jesus 
satisfy  all  the  manifold  needs  of  human  nature. 
To  all  alike  He  says, — "  Come  unto  Me,  all  ye 
that  labor  and  are  heavy  laden  and  I  will 
give  you  rest.  Take  My  yoke  upon  you,  and 
learn  of  Me ;  for  I  am  meek  and  lowly  in  heart ; 
and  ye  shall  find  rest  unto  your  souls."  The 
marvel  of  it  is  that  His  yoke  or  His  way  of 
life  is  suited  to  all,  irrespective  of  tempera- 
ment, point  of  view,  race  or  class. 

Have  the  followers  of  Jesus  maintained  the 
catholicity  of  His  spirit?  It  is  the  failure  of 
organized  religion  at  this  point  that  accounts 
for  the  sects.  That  which  Christ  made  broad 
enough  to  fit  all  men,  has  frequently  been 
narrowed  down  to  fit  a  particular  kind  of  men. 
Some  interpretation  of  His  message  that  is 
local,  racial,  limited,  has  been  seized  upon, 
exalted   and    regarded    as    fundamental.      The 


CHURCH  AND  SECT  6 

outer  garb  has  been  thought  of  more  import- 
ance than  the  spirit  within.  There  has  been 
failure  to  realize  that  the  religion  of  Jesus 
may  express  itself  in  a  thousand  different 
forms,  and  that  "just  as  the  roof  of  some 
splendid  mansion  unites  a  hundred  rooms  of 
different  size  and  shape,  and  just  as  the  one 
blue  sky  overarches  and  unites  mountains, 
pastures,  and  vineyards,  so  the  spirit  of  Jesus 
should  unite  disciples  of  every  temperament, 
shade  of  belief,  and  point  of  view." 

Sectarianism  is  of  many  different  forms  and 
types.  In  the  case  of  not  a  few  religious 
bodies  at  the  present  time  it  is  manifestly  that 
of  an  antiquated  and  impossible  creed.  Con- 
ceptions of  God  and  man,  and  ideas  of  the 
life  in  God  that  are  repellent  to  the  educated 
mind,  are  made  the  conditions  of  fellowship, 
and  views  of  nature  and  interpretations  of 
history  that  are  plainly  opposed  to  the  find- 
ings of  science  are  insisted  upon.  Of  the  one 
hundred  and  forty  different  branches  of  the 
church  that  exist  in  this  country  alone,  by 
far  the  larger  number,  including  many  of  the 
leading  bodies,  are  hampered  by  a  sectarianism 
of  this  kind.  While  rendering  valuable  service 
to  society,  and  while  thoroughly  Christian  in 
many  ways,  their  usefulness  is  limited  and  they 
are  shut  out  from  the  character  of  a  true 
church  by  an  antiquated  and  impossible  creed. 


6  THE  COMING  CREED 

In  certain  cases  it  is  insistance  upon  the 
value  of  the  literal  observance  of  certain 
symbolic  rites,  and  the  failure  to  exalt  the 
inner  spirit  above  the  outer  form  that  makes 
the  condition  wherein  the  sectarianism  lies.  In 
still  other  cases  it  is  the  over  emphasis  of  a 
peculiar  phase  of  emotional  experience,  the 
constant  iteration  of  a  single  issue  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  other  equally  important  claims,  a 
narrow  range  of  emotional  sympathies,  or  an 
inability  to  appreciate  the  value  of  other  points 
of  view,  that  makes  of  this  or  that  religious 
body  a  sect.  It  may  be  said,  indeed,  that  any 
branch  of  the  church  becomes  a  sect  when  as 
a  condition  of  fellowship  it  demands  assent  to 
a  dogmatic  statement,  no  matter  what  the  form, 
or  insists  upon  any  peculiarity  of  practice, 
or  upon  the  observance  of  any  symbolic  rite 
and  thereby  excludes  from  membership  other 
equally  earnest  people  who  desire  to  follow 
Christ,  and  who  are  loyal  to  His  spirit. 

The  true  church  life  that  is  slowly  but  surely 
rising  up  to  take  the  place  of  the  sects  will 
be  as  comprehensive  as  the  spirit  of  Christ.  It 
will  conserve  the  good  of  all  the  sects  while 
avoiding  the  limitations  of  each.  It  will  have 
the  intellectual  freedom  of  Unitarianism  with- 
out its  emotional  poverty;  the  large  hopeful- 
ness of  Universalism  without  its  insistance 
upon  a  single  issue  to  the  exclusion  of  other 


CHURCH  AND  SECT  7 

equally  important  claims;  the  warmth  and 
devotion  of  Methodism  without  its  disposition 
to  over-emphasize  a  peculiar  phase  of  emo- 
tional experience;  the  earnest  zeal  of  the 
Baptists  without  their  tendency  to  subordinate 
the  Christian  spirit  to  the  practice  of  a  sym- 
bolic rite;  the  calm  dignity  of  Presbyterianism 
without  its  inability  to  unbend;  the  democratic 
idea  of  Congregationalism  without  the  care- 
free methods  and  the  impotence  to  which  it  so 
often  leads ;  the  wonderful  sagacity  of  Roman 
Catholicism  without  its  disposition  to  ignore 
the  intellectual  claims ;  and  the  sweet  mysticism 
of  Quakerism  without  its  extreme  distrust  of 
all  outward  forms.  In  short,  the  good  of  all 
while  avoiding  the  limitations  of  each. 

In  the  coming  Church  there  will  still  be 
variety  of  individual  preference  and  taste,  and 
men  will  be  left  free  to  exercise  the  same. 
Christ  gave  no  teaching  in  regard  to  millinery. 
He  leaves  each  teacher  to  decide  for  himself 
whether  he  shall  wear  a  long  white  robe  or 
a  short  black  one.  He  chose  water  as  a  symbol 
of  the  cleansing  grace  of  God,  but  He  ex- 
pressed no  preference  as  to  whether  men  should 
be  baptized  with  much  water  or  with  little.  If 
a  man  is  benefited  by  fasting  Friday  and  feast- 
ing Saturday,  or  if  he  is  helped  by  the  tink- 
ling of  bells  and  the  burning  of  incense,  and 
finds  that  the  perfumed  clouds  passing  through 


8  THE  COMING  CREED 

the  open  windows  and  rising  heavenward  have 
become  chariots  that  lift  his  aspirations  to 
the  skies,  then  such  an  one  is  left  free  to  bum 
his  incense  or  to  tinkle  his  bells.  What  Christ 
insists  upon  is  that  his  disciples  shall  keep 
the  "  unity  of  the  spirit  in  the  bond  of  peace." 
It  may  be  said  in  brief  that  the  belief  of 
the  coming  church  will  be  an  instinct  and  a 
spirit  of  life  and  not  merely  a  definition.  Its 
fellowship  will  be  that  of  faith,  love  and  service. 
Its  compulsion  will  be  a  judgment  faculty 
in  each  man's  soul,  and  not  a  dogma  or  a 
system.  It  will  exist  for  help  and  cheer  and 
not  for  external  authority.  Its  forces  will  be 
precisely  those  that  filled  the  first  disciples, 
the  forces  of  a  great  love,  and  an  immortal 
hope.  Its  level  will  be  the  high  possibilities 
of  humanity.  Its  progress  will  be  measured 
by  that  of  the  race.  It  will  include  all  who 
seek  truth  and  yearn  for  goodness,  and  it  will 
shut  out  none  except  those  who  shut  them- 
selves out  from  the  truth  they  cannot  see  and 
the  love  they  cannot  feel. 


n 

THE  MORAL  QUALITY  OF  BELIEF 


"  He  that  believeth  and  is  baptized  shall  be 
saved,    but    he    that    disbelieveth    shall    be    con- 

i^^^- "  -Jesus. 

"  When  we  have  put  our  belief  into  our  char- 
acter, into  our  deed  of  kindness,  into  our  hero 
sacrifice,  there  will  be  no  room  for  arguing.  And 
what  of  our  creed  cannot  be  expressed  in  these 
ways,  what  of  it  remains  as  mere  words  untran- 
slatable into  things,  may  well  be  left  out.  '* 

— J.  Brierly. 


THE  MORAL  QUALITY  OF  BELIEF 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Jesus  put  be- 
lief in  the  very  forefront  of  His  teaching.  He 
began  His  ministry  by  urging  men  to  believe, 
and  in  the  upper  room  on  the  last  night  of 
His  earthly  life,  the  greatest  word  on  His  lips 
was  the  word  "  believe."  "  These  things  have 
I  said  unto  you  that  you  may  believe."  He 
was  always  looking  for  belief  and  there  was 
no  question  that  He  asked  with  so  much 
earnestness  as  the  question,  "Do  you  believe.'^" 
When  he  found  belief  in  men  He  was  greatly 
exalted  and  broke  forth  into  exlaimations  of 
joy,  and  on  the  other  hand  He  was  greatly 
saddened  and  hindered  by  the  presence  of  unbe- 
lief. The  New  Testament  statement  relative 
to  His  ministry  in  Nazareth,  that  "  He  did 
not  many  works  there  because  of  their  unbe- 
lief," is  a  pathetic  revelation  of  his  dependence 
upon  an  atmosphere  of  sympathy  and  respon- 
siveness, and  when  it  was  wanting  His  efforts 
were  chilled  and  paralyzed.  It  was  apparently 
the  thought  of  Jesus  that  through  belief  man 
becomes  possessed  of  a  new  principle  of  life 
in  virtue  of  which  he  enters  on  a  higher  scale 
of  being.  He  therefore  entrusted  to  His 
disciples  the  principle  of  belief  as  the  great 
secret  that  He  had  come  to  communicate,  and 
He  sent  them  forth  into  all  the  world  to  declare 
11 


12  THE  COMING  CREED 

the  message  that  "he  that  believeth  shall  be 
saved,  and  he  that  believeth  not  shall  be  con- 
demned." 

Manifestly  the  first  question  to  be  asked  is 
what  Jesus  meant  by  the  use  of  this  term,  and 
this  question  is  all  the  more  urgent  because 
of  the  evident  confusion  of  many  in  respect  to 
this  great  matter.  That  belief  of  some  sort 
is  all  important,  that  it  is  the  watchword  of 
true  religion,  that  it  is  the  root  of  all  Christian 
devotion  and  heroism,  the  followers  of  Christ 
are  universally  agreed,  but  when  it  comes  to 
the  question  of  what  belief  is  they  are  by  no 
means  so  clear.  Other  generations,  in  deal- 
ing with  this  conception  were  no  less  at  sea 
than  we  are,  and  the  result  of  their  uncertainty 
as  to  what  it  means  to  believe  has  been  to  be- 
queath us  an  inheritance  of  misconceptions  that 
constitutes,  perhaps  the  chief  difficulty  of  our 
problem. 

A  great  source  of  trouble  has  been  an  in- 
discriminate mixing  together  of  matters  which 
are  scientific  and  historical  with  those  which 
are  purely  moral  and  spiritual,  and  the  failure 
to  realize  that  it  is  in  reference  to  the  latter 
that  Christ  used  the  word  "  believe."  The 
unfortunate  outcome  of  this  lack  of  discrimina- 
tion has  been  that  Christian  belief  has  become 
identified  in  many  minds  with  views  of  nature 
and  history,  which  belong  to  an  immature  and 


MORAL  QUALITY  OF  BELIEF       13 

uncritical  period  of  our  development,  and 
which  have  necessarily  been  discredited  with 
the  advance  of  the  scientific  spirit. 

It  was  the  general  failure  at  this  point,  until 
within  comparatively  recent  years  that  opened 
the  way  for  such  attacks  upon  the  Christian 
faith  as  were  made  by  men  like  Thomas  Paine, 
Robert  IngersoU  and  William  Draper,  who 
spread  the  idea  far  and  wide  that  belief 
in  the  Christian  sense  is  synonymous  with 
credulity,  that  it  will  not  bear  the  light,  that 
if  men  are  intelligent  they  cannot  be  devout, 
and  that  if  they  are  devout  they  cannot  be 
intelligent.  It  was  this  failure  that  opened 
the  way  also  for  such  attacks  as  were  made 
by  Mr.  Huxley,  who  selected  certain  miracles 
from  the  Bible,  held  them  up  to  ridicule  and 
sought  to  make  them  the  test  of  the  credibility 
of  Christianity,  and  as  were  made  more  re- 
cently by  Mr.  Cotter  Morrison,  an  English 
writer,  who  selected  from  the  book  of  Genesis 
the  story  of  the  fall,  and  then  declared  that 
man  has  not  fallen  but  risen,  and  that  being 
so,  the  whole  theory  of  redemption  is  disproved. 

That  such  attacks  upon  the  Christian  faith 
have  helped  to  create  a  prejudice  against  it, 
that  greatly  hinders  the  advance  of  essential 
Christianity  can  hardly  be  called  into  question, 
and  the  fact  that  very  many  Christians  are 
still  confusing  what  is  scientific  and  historical 


14  THE  COMING  CREED 

with  what  is  purely  moral  and  spiritual,  and 
insisting  in  the  name  of  belief  upon  views  of 
nature  and  history  which  have  been  thoroughly 
discredited  and  disproved,  is  making  it  exceed- 
ingly difficult  in  many  quarters  to  remove  that 
prejudice.  "  We  need  for  our  time  to  have 
it  made  very  clear  what  belief  is  and  what  it 
is  not,  to  note  the  different  forms  of  it  and 
their  value,  and  the  mistaken  conceptions  of 
it  that  have  come  to  us  from  other  years." 

Turning  to  the  teaching  of  Jesus  it  becomes 
evident  upon  the  most  casual  inquiry  that  His 
insistence  upon  belief  was  by  no  means  an  ap- 
peal against  reason.  On  the  contrary  the  whole 
method  of  Jesus,  as  shown  by  the  parables,  the 
sermon  on  the  mount,  and  all  His  recorded  ut- 
terances, makes  it  clear  that  belief  as  conceived 
by  Jesus  is  not  the  suppression  of  the  reason, 
but  its  highest  and  divinest  expression.  Neither 
was  His  summons  to  believe  an  appeal  against 
the  truths  of  science  and  history.  It  is  not,  in- 
deed, in  this  sphere  that  the  emphasis  of  his 
thought  lies.  Whether  the  fall  of  man  was  a  fall 
up  or  a  fall  down,  whether  the  miracles  cited  by 
Mr.  Huxley  ever  really  occurred  or  whether 
they  did  not  occur,  whether  certain  books  of 
the  Bible  are  of  a  single  or  a  composite  author- 
ship, and  whether  they  are  to  be  regarded  as 
a  fact  or  interpreted  as  fiction  is  for  scientific 
research,  and  not  for  religious  faith  to  decide. 


MORAL  QUALITY  OF  BELIEF       15 

Whatever  the  ultimate  verdict  of  science  upon 
the  matters  belonging  to  its  own  sphere  may 
be,  it  will  have  to  be  accepted  as  final,  and 
what  we  need  to  realize  is  that  it  may  be 
accepted  with  entire  confidence  that  it  will  not 
jeopardize  the  real  interests,  ideals  and  aims 
of  faith. 

The  simple  fact  is  that  Jesus  made  His 
appeal  to  the  moral  and  spiritual  intuitions 
of  men,  and  to  the  truth  that  is  evident  to 
the  moral  sense.  The  whole  method  of  his 
teaching  shows  this.  "  The  silences  and  omis- 
sions of  Jesus,"  as  some  one  has  put  it,  "  are 
truly  remarkable,"  He  never  attempts  to 
prove  the  existence  of  God,  but  simply  takes 
God  for  granted.  He  offers  no  argument  to 
show  the  reality  of  the  soul,  the  unseen 
spiritual  world,  or  the  extension  of  human 
destiny  beyond.  He  drew  the  picture  of  a 
publican  at  prayer,  and  that  was  His  way  of 
declaring  the  existence  of  the  soul.  He  drew 
a  picture  of  Dives  and  Lazarus  and  that  was 
His  way  of  declaring  the  immortal  destinies  of 
men,  and  their  relation  to  an  unseen  world. 
Why  did  he  not  offer  arguments  in  order  to 
reinforce  these  great  convictions?  It  was  be- 
cause he  realized  that  no  argument  would  give 
them  cogency.  They  are  witnessed  to  by  the 
moral  and  spiritual  intuitions  of  the  race,  and 
it  was  to  this  witness  that  Jesus  made  His 
appeal. 


16  THE  COMING  CREED 

It  is  in  this  light  that  we  are  able  to  see 
what  Jesus  meant  by  belief.  To  His  mind 
it  was  fidelity  to  the  moral  and  spiritual  intui- 
tions, and  to  the  truth  that  is  evident  to  the 
moral  sense,  and  unbelief  to  Him  was  faithless- 
ness. By  His  own  fidelity  He  discovered  the 
path  that  leads  to  the  heart  of  God  and  to 
the  assurance  of  immortal  worth.  Having 
learned  for  Himself  the  secret  of  the  gentle, 
generous,  confident,  and  joyous  life.  He  sum- 
moned every  one  to  know  and  to  share  it  with 
Him.  It  was  not  simply  a  venture  of  thought 
that  He  asked,  but  a  venture  of  conduct,  it 
was  the  choice  and  the  direction  of  the  life 
in  a  certain  way.  Merely  to  stand  in  the 
presence  of  Christ's  goodness,  and  to  think 
of  His  ideals  is  to  be  convinced  of  their  ever- 
lasting worth,  and  to  trust  this  conviction  and 
to  act  upon  it  is  what  Christ  meant  by  be- 
lief. The  fundamental  failure  of  our  Chris- 
tianity lies  in  the  fact  that  belief  is  construed 
simply  as  the  assent  of  the  intellect  to  certain 
ideas  rather  than  the  choice  and  direction  of 
the  life  in  a  certain  way.  Men  are  willing  to 
make  the  venture  of  thought  but  they  are  not 
willing  to  make  the  venture  of  conduct.  It 
is  not  so  difficult  to  persuade  the  average  man 
that  he  has  a  soul,  but  it  is  often  very  difficult 
to  persuade  him  to  live  as  if  he  had  a  soul. 
This,  however,  and  nothing  less  is  what  Christ 
meant  by  belief. 


MORAL  QUALITY  OF  BELIEF       17 

"  He  that  believeth  shall  be  saved,  and  he 
that  disbelieveth  shall  be  condemned."  It  is 
not  merely  because  of  the  decision  of  some 
arbitrary  tribunal  that  this  is  so,  it  is  the 
verdict  of  all  human  experience.  He  who  be- 
lieves in  high  things  in  the  sense  of  respond- 
ing to  them  and  basing  his  conduct  upon  them 
is  saved  from  the  tyranny  of  low  things.  He 
who  believes  in  the  spiritual  and  eternal  is 
saved  from  the  degradation  of  the  material 
and  the  temporal.  "  He  that  disbelieveth  is 
condemned."  He  condemns  himself  at  the  bar 
of  his  own  higher  nature;  by  consigning  him- 
self to  a  low,  poor,  mean,  starved,  and  perhaps 
wicked  life,  and  this  is  faithlessness. 

If  we  take,  for  example,  the  vision  of  God 
that  Jesus  brought,  how  evident  it  is  that  the 
man  who  believes  in  that  in  the  sense  of  re- 
sponding to  it  and  making  it  the  governing 
principle  of  his  life,  is  saved.  He  is  saved 
from  selfishness  because  Jesus  said,  "  God  is 
love,"  and  for  man  to  believe  in  God  is  for 
him  to  become  love  also;  he  is  saved  from 
wickedness,  because  Jesus  said,  "  God  is 
righteous,"  and  for  man  to  believe  in  God  is 
for  him  to  become  righteous  also;  it  is  to  be 
saved  from  impurity,  because  Jesus  said,  "  God 
is  pure,"  and  for  man  to  believe  in  God  is  for 
him  to  become  pure  also;  and  he  is  saved  from 
resentment   and  injustice,  because   Jesus   said, 


18  THE  COMING  CREED 

"  God  is  forgiving,"  and  for  man  to  believe  in 
God  is  for  him  also  to  become^T'orgiving. 

If  we  take  once  more  the  vision  of  the  soul 
that  Jesus  brought,  how  evident  it  is  that  he 
who  believes  in  that  is  saved.  He  is  saved 
from  materialism  which  is  our  greatest  foe, 
because  he  "lives  not  after  the  flesh  but  after 
the  spirit;"  he  is  saved  from  the  evil  that  stul- 
tifies life  by  the  awakening  of  a  true  self -rever- 
ence; and  he  is  saved  from  the  fear  of  the 
grave  through  the  experience  of  an  immortal 
life  on  this  side  of  the  grave. 

"  Lord,  I  believe,  help  Thou  mine  unbelief." 
That  is  a  prayer  for  moral  and  spiritual  faith- 
fulness. Many  a  man  has  need  to  realize  that 
opinions  which  command  only  the  consent  of 
the  intellect  amount  to  little,  and  no  one  has 
a  right  to  call  himself  a  Christian  simply  be- 
cause of  these.  "  I  am  sick  of  opinions,"  said 
John  Wesley,  "  I  am  weary  to  bear  them ;  my 
soul  loathes  the  frothy  food.  Give  me  solid 
substantial  religion;  give  me  a  humble,  gentle 
lover  of  God  and  man,  a  man  full  of  mercy 
and  good  faith,  a  man  laying  himself  out  in 
the  work  of  faith,  the  patience  of  hope,  the 
labor  of  love.  Let  my  soul  be  with  those 
Christians  wheresoever  they  be,  and  whatso- 
ever opinions  they  are  of."  The  belief  en- 
joined by  Christ  makes  its  appeal  to  the  whole 
nature,  it  means  faithfulness,  and  no  man  needs 


MORAL  QUALITY  OF  BELIEF  19 

to  be  told  when  he  has  been  faithless.  He  that 
believeth  shall  be  saved  and  the  church  or 
people  who  believe  shall  be  saved.  He  that 
believeth  not  shall  be  condemned.  He  con- 
demns himself  by  consigning  himself  to  a  low 
and  unworthy  life  when  he  might  have  life 
above  measure. 


m 

GOD    AS    INFINITE    AND    UNFAILING 
LOVE 


**  God  is  love ;  and  he  that  abideth  in  love  abi- 
deth  in  God,  and  God  abideth  in  him.  *' 

— John. 

**  The  career  open  to  love  is  infinite.  It  is  the 
life  of  the  Father,  which  each  conscious  child  of 
his  is  permitted  to  share.  No  proof  less  than 
the  actual  experience  of  this  life  of  love  could 
reveal  God  to  any  man.  Yet  every  man  who  has 
this  experience  is  as  sure  of  divine  life  in  the 
world  as  he  is  of  his  own  existence.  The  filial 
experience  has  made  the  Father  manifest.  '* 

— President  Hyde. 


GOD  AS  INFINITE  AND  UNFAILING 
LOVE 

The  average  man  has  not  yet  begun  to  grasp 
the  all  important  fact  that  the  conception  of 
God  is  for  us  a  continual  growth  in  conscious- 
ness. In  recent  years  the  idea  of  God  has 
been  carefully  and  painfully  traced  in  its  evolu- 
tion from  the  notion  of  primitive  savages.  It 
has  been  shown  that  at  every  stage  of  his 
development  man  has  created  his  God  in  his 
own  image,  and  this  in  not  a  few  cases  has 
been  confidently  offered  as  a  refutation  of 
theistic  belief.  A  good  many  have  accepted 
the  reasoning,  and  have  jumped  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  whole  question  has  been  closed, 
and  that  there  is  nothing  more  to  be  said.  This 
process  of  reasoning,  however,  really  proves 
that  in  every  generation  man's  conception  of 
God  is  just  as  great  as  he  can  grasp  and 
nothing  more.  Our  conception  of  the  Infinite 
Reality  must  ever  depend  upon  our  organ  of 
vision  and  understanding. 

It  is  at  this  point  that  the  creeds  of  other 
years  most  conspicuously  failed.  They  did 
not  reckon  upon  the  growth  of  human  nature 
and  the  deepening  of  human  insight.  Con- 
ceiving God  in  terms  of  their  own  limitations 
and  figuring  Him  and  His  universe  by  the 
institutions  which  they  themselves  had  created, 
23 


£4  THE  COMING  CREED 

the  men  of  other  generations  represented  God 
as  a  king  and  pictured  His  sovereignty  as  that 
of   a   celestial   Mikado    or   an   infinite   Caesar. 
Such    a    conception   very   naturally   gave   rise 
to  ideas  which  are  repellant  to  the  more  sen- 
sitive  feelings    of   men   today,   but   which   ap- 
peared very  natural  even  to  the  most  cultivated 
people  in  the  age  when  they  orginated.     Take, 
for  example,  the  idea  not  infrequently  advanced 
by    religious    teaching    until   within    compara- 
tively recent  years,  that  God  was  pleased  with 
the  sufferings  of  people,  that  He  had  created 
some   for  the  express   purpose   of  visiting  his 
wrath  upon  them  in  endless  and  cruel  torture. 
Take,  also,  the  idea  that    God    was    under  no 
obligation   to    do    anything    for   the    salvation 
of    sinners.      It   is    only   very    gradually   that 
these   crude   and   limited   ideas   have   been   dis- 
pelled, because  it  is  only  thus  that  a  human 
consciousness  that  is    able  to    conceive    of  God 
in   other  and  higher  terms   has   been   evolved. 
In    the   light    of   this    self-evincing    fact    that 
human  nature  is  yet  in  the  making,  "that  it 
doth  not  yet  appear  what  we  shall  be,"  and 
that  the  God  consciousness  of  men  in  every  age 
is  the  measure  of  their  growth,  the  folly  and 
the  futility  of  trying  to  cHng  to  the  statements 
of   faith  that   were   cast   in   other   years,   and 
of  trying  to  make  them  the  test  of  faith  today, 
should  be  apparent  to  every  discerning  mind. 


GOD  AS  LOVE  «5 

The  conviction  that  at  the  heart  of  things 
is  an  Infinite  and  Unfailing  Love,  that  lall 
history,  all  men,  and  all  times  are  in  the  hands 
of  such  a  Love,  has  come  to  be  the  chief  postu- 
late of  intelligent  religious  thinking  and  teach- 
ing, and  without  doubt  it  will  be  the  funda- 
mental postulate  of  the  coming  creed.  It  is 
true  that  the  conviction  of  an  Infinite  Love  is 
the  very  essence  of  the  new  Testament  evangel, 
that  it  is  central  in  Christ's  doctrine  of  the 
Father,  and  that  it  runs  through  the  teach- 
ings of  Apostolic  Christianity.  It  is  true,  also, 
that  as  a  minor  note  it  has  found  expression 
all  through  the  years.  We  have  need,  how- 
ever, to  observe  at  this  point  that  the  manifest 
enlargement  of  the  human  spirit  that  is  com* 
ing  today  is  giving  to  this  great  conception 
all  the  force  of  a  new  revelation.  When  it 
is  called  to  mind  that  the  men  who  wrote  the 
theological  systems  of  other  years,  in  which 
God  is  pictured  with  the  sentiments  of  a  me- 
diaeval baron,  were  also  readers  of  the  New 
Testament,  and  that  they  were  sincere  and 
devoted,  the  only  way  to  account  for  their 
failure  to  grasp  this  great  central  truth  of 
early  Christianity  is  that  their  eyes  were  holden, 
there  was  some  defect  in  their  organ  of  vision, 
the  mind  was  limited  to  inherited  conceptions 
that  had  to  be  outgrown.  It  is  the  height, 
therefore,  to  which  the  religious  mind  of  to- 


26  THE  COMING  CREED 

day  has  risen  that  makes  the  God  of  the  Middle 
Ages  impossible.  We  have  come  to  realize  that 
energy  is  not  of  itself  God,  nor  indeed  the 
greater  part  of  Him.  With  the  growth  of 
the  spiritual  consciousness  has  come  the  in- 
sight that  ethical  reality  is  greater  than  mere 
power,  that  right  transcends  might,  that  grace 
is  superior  to  force,  that  love  is  the  supreme 
strength. 

To  some  minds  the  calamities,  misfortunes, 
inequalities  and  miseries  of  life  offer  serious 
objections  that  stand  in  the  way  of  belief  in 
God  as  Infinite  Love.  To  such  minds  the 
falling  towers  that  crush,  the  floods  and  vol- 
canic eruptions  that  destroy,  and  the  cruel 
men  that  kill  are  the  convincing  proof  of  the 
supremacy  of  blind  and  heartless  force.  Nor 
is  it  easy  to  answer  this  objection  in  a  way 
that  is  convincing  to  the  objector  himself,  for 
the  simple  but  very  obvious  reason  that  the 
great  argument  for  the  supremacy  of  Infinite 
Love  is  an  insight  rather  than  a  process  of 
logic.  The  intellect  is  indeed  a  proof  of  God, 
but  it  is  our  poorest  proof.  "  It  is  when  we 
love,  suffer,  labor,  serve,  and  forgive  that  we 
are  surest  of  God,  since  we  know  Him  in  these 
things  as  our  other  higher  part."  Men  who 
have  themselves  risen  to  the  plane  of  true, 
pure  love,  and  have  felt  in  their  own  hearts 
the  rising  tide  of  sympathy  that  "  makes  the 


GOD  AS  LOVE  27 

whole  world  kin,"  experience  but  very  little 
difficulty  in  believing  in  the  Infinite  Love,  that 
the  mysteries  of  the  outer  world  are  mysteries 
of  goodness  and  not  of  evil,  "  that  all  things 
work  for  good  to  them  that  are  called  accord- 
ing to  His  purpose."  It  is  from  the  emotional 
and  moral  riches  of  his  own  nature  that  man 
draws  his  chief  insight  into  the  character  of 
God. 

Another  objection  that  is  frequently  made 
to  the  belief  in  God  as  Infinite  Love,  is  that 
in  thus  representing  Him  we  are  simply  pro- 
jecting on  the  sky  an  image  of  ourselves,  and 
setting  up  as  an  object  of  worship  a  gigantic 
man  of  our  own  creation.  This  objection,  how- 
ever, is  by  no  means  as  serious  as  many  have 
thought.  We  cannot  imagine  a  single  ray  of 
light  as  self-existent,  but  only  as  a  revelation 
of  that  fountain  of  splendor  from  which  it 
came.  So  it  is  with  the  mind,  heart  and  will 
of  man.  A  single  ray  of  intelligence  suggests 
an  Infinite  Mind;  a  single  volition  suggests 
an  Infinite  Will;  and  one  throb  of  affection 
tells  us  that  somewhere  and  somehow  love  is 
measureless  and  eternal.  In  other  words,  that 
which  is  imperfect  in  man  proves  the  existence 
of  perfection  somewhere,  and  that  which  is 
limited  in  man  proves  the  existence  somewhere 
of  the  unlimited.  The  cause  must  be  adequate 
to  explain  the  effect.     We  cannot  believe  that 


28  THE  COMING  CREED 

blind  force  is  sufficient  to  explain  the  existence 
of  love.  It  takes  a  soul  to  touch  a  soul.  It 
requires  love  to  evoke  love. 

It  is  true  that  in  speaking  of  God  as  love 
personality  is  presupposed,  but  that  does  not 
necessarily  imply  that  God  is  limited  and  loca- 
lized. We  cannot  measure  the  Infinite  Being 
by  our  limitations.  The  personality  that 
reaches  down  to  the  plane  of  the  human  con- 
sciousness is  no  more  limited  by  that  contact 
than  is  the  ocean  by  the  petty  island  around 
which  its  waves  sweep.  To  say  that  God  is  a 
person  is  merely  to  assert  that  He  is  intelli- 
gence and  will,  essentially  such  as  we  know  in 
ourselves,  but  related  to  such  qualities  in  man 
somewhat  as  the  universal  atmosphere  is  re- 
lated to  a  single  breath.  We  can  best  think 
of  God  perhaps  as  the  spirit  that  pervades  the 
universe  as  our  own  spirit  pervades  the  body, 
so  that  He  is  manifested  in  every  part,  though 
not  identical  with  any  part.  He  uses  the  uni- 
verse as  the  spirit  uses  the  body,  but  He  is 
independent  of  it,  and  transcends  it  as  the 
spirit  is  independent  of  and  transcends  the  body. 

Still  another  objection  to  the  presentation 
of  God  as  love  comes  from  the  side  of  religious 
belief  and  is  offered,  as  is  supposed,  in  the 
interest  of  a  more  wholesome  and  invigorating 
faith.  It  is  said  that  the  emphasis  of  this 
idea  leads  those  who  accept  it  to  think  lightly 


GOD  AS  LOVE  29 

of  the  demands  of  righteousness,  and  of  the 
restraints  of  law,  and  that  the  very  founda- 
tions of  morality  are  thereby  undermined.  It 
is  no  doubt  true  that  in  the  widespread  re- 
action that  has  come  against  a  view  of  the 
Deity  that  represented  Him  as  an  Oriental 
monarch,  jealous  of  personal  honor,  and  deter- 
mined to  vindicate  it  with  blood,  there  is  a 
tendency  to  reduce  the  character  of  God  to  an 
easy-going  good  nature,  and  to  think  of  Him 
as  too  kind  to  punish.  It  is  only  natural 
that  the  reaction  from  the  harsh  and  arbitrary 
views  of  God,  which  were  once  held  should  lead 
many  to  an  opposite  extreme,  but  the  remedy 
for  this  evil  is  not  a  return  to  the  rigid  and 
repellent  views  that  have  been  outgrown.  It 
is  a  proper  enforcement  of  the  true  meaning 
of  love  as  a  word  that  stands  for  the  moral 
completeness  of  God,  including  His  holiness 
as  well  as  His  mercy,  and  His  justice  as  well 
as  His  kindness.  It  is  an  undue  narrowing  of 
the  idea  of  love  that  leads  to  the  fear  that 
the  holiness  of  God  will  be  lost  to  us,  if  we 
maintain  in  its  fullest  and  largest  meaning  the 
truth  that  God  is  love.  What  we  have  to 
realize  is  that  love  describes  the  moral  char- 
acter of  God,  and  that  it  is  not  necessary  for 
Him  to  surrender  His  holiness  in  order  to 
be  kind.  His  love  finds  expression  in  His 
justice  as  truly  as  in  His  forgiveness,  and  in 


80  THE  COMING  CREED 

the  exercise  of    His    discipline    as    truly  as  in 
the  exercise  of  His  grace. 

The  coming  creed,  unlike  the  creeds  of  other 
years,  will  stand  for  the  very  highest  con- 
ceivable ideal  of  God,  and  that  is  that,  "  God 
is  love."  The  height  to  which  the  human  soul 
has  risen  will  permit  of  no  other  conception 
of  Him.  For  the  Church  to  insist  upon  any 
lower  ideal  can  only  end  in  disaster.  The 
coming  creed  will  recognize  that  God  is  greater 
than  our  hearts  or  thoughts,  or  than  the  sun 
of  all  the  conceivable  perfections  that  we 
ascribe  to  Him,  and  its  doctrine  of  love  will 
include  them  all.  It  will  recognize  that  love 
as  applied  to  God  cannot  be  warped  or 
narrowed  down,  that  God  is  pouring  His  love 
upon  us  in  order  to  bring  us  into  sympathy 
and  fellowship  of  life  with  Himself,  and  into 
His  own  moral  likeness,  that  love  is  the  sum 
of  all  goodness,  and  he  that  "  dwelleth  in  love 
dwelleth  in  God  and  God  in  him." 


IV 

JESUS,  THE    SUPREME   REVELATION 
OF  DIVINE  AND  HUMAN  LOVE 


But  Thee,  but  thee,  O  sovereign  Seer  of  time, 
But  Thee,  O  poets'  Poet,  Wisdom's  Tongue, 
But  Thee,  O  man's   best   Man,  O  love's  best 

Love, 
O  perfect  life  in  perfect  labor  writ, 
O  all  men's  Comrade,  Servant,  King,  or  Priest, — 
What  if  or  yet,   what   mole,  what   flaw,   what 

lapse. 
What  least  defect  or  shadow  of  defect. 
What  rumor  tattled  by  an  enemy. 
Of  inference  loose,  what  lack  of  grace 
Even  in  torture's  grasp,  or  sleep's,  or  death's. 
Oh,  what  amiss  may  I  forgive  in  Thee, 
Jesus,  good  Paragon,  thou  Crystal  Christ." 

— Sidney  Lanier. 


JESUS,  THE  SUPREME  REVELATION 
OF  DIVINE   AND  HUMAN  LOVE 

Starting  with  the  New  Testament  period, 
what  transformations  do  we  behold  in  the 
Church's  thought  of  Jesus!  As  we  pass  from 
the  first  to  the  second  century  we  find  our- 
selves amidst  the  strange,  and  to  this  age 
rather  unaccountable  phantasies  of  Gnosticism. 
The  person  of  Jesus  is  here  represented  simply 
as  a  link  of  the  interminable  chain  of  shadowy 
beings  conjured  up  by  the  fevered  Eastern 
imagination.  As  we  study  them  on  the  pages 
of  the  early  writers,  the  brain  reels  and  we 
become  lost  in  the  maze  of  gigantic  unrealities. 
Next  comes  the  Christ  who  was  conceived  by 
the  Platonized  minds  and  the  bewildering 
speculations  that  gather  about  the  logos 
doctrine.  Later  comes  the  Christ  of  the  Greek 
metaphysics  and  the  homousian  and  the  homo- 
eousian  doctrines.  Still  later  as  we  approach 
the  Dark  Ages  we  realize  that  the  historic 
Jesus  has  receded  still  farther  from  the  view 
of  men,  the  compassionate  Son  of  Man  has 
yielded  place  to  a  stern  and  terrible  being 
whose  wrath  has  to  be  turned  aside  by  the 
supplication  of  the  Virgin  Mother.  He  is  a 
sinewy  athlete,  whose  gianthood  is  matched 
against  feeble  sinners  in  order  to  sweep  them 
into  the  fiery  furnace,  amidst  the  plaudits  of 
33 


34  THE  COMING  CREED 

admiring  saints,  or  as  a  mighty  smith  whose 
office  is  to  forge  fetters  for  the  sinner  rather 
than  to  set  the  prisoner  free.  There  was  in 
fact  a  considerable  period  when  the  historic 
Jesus  seemed  all  but  obliterated  from  the 
popular  mind.  Since  the  Reformation,  the 
speculations  that  gather  about  the  person  of 
Jesus,  which  for  the  most  part  have  their  origin 
in  the  older  creeds,  are  far  too  numerous  to 
mention. 

In  view  of  the  transcendent  influence  of 
Jesus  it  is  scarcely  to  be  wondered  at  that  the 
problem  of  His  person  has  attracted  such  at- 
tention, and  that  in  every  generation  men  have 
striven  with  such  earnestness  to  frame  a  defini- 
tion of  Him  that  will  fit  in  with  their  philoso- 
phical systems.  Such  efforts  have  not  been 
without  value,  but  the  conviction  is  growing 
that  the  person  of  Jesus  is  greater  than  all 
our  systems  and  that  it  is  not  possible  to  frame 
a  definition  that  will  adequately  represent  Him. 

"  Our  little  systems  have  their  day, 
They  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be, 

They  are  but  broken  lights  of  Thee, 

And  Thou,  Oh  Lord,  art  more  than  they.  " 

The  psychological  interest  of  recent  years  is 
bringing  us  to  realize  that  all  personality  is 
a  mystery.  We  cannot  even  define  our  own 
personality.     We  know  that  we  are  related  in 


JESUS  35 

some  way  to  the  Infinite  Reality,  but  just 
how,  is  a  matter  that  we  find  it  very  difficult 
to  express.  We  say  that  we  are  human  and 
that  Christ  was  divine,  but  where  the  divine 
begins  and  the  human  leaves  off  is  a  problem 
that  confounds  even  the  greatest  intellects. 
That  Christ  shared  our  nature  to  the  fullest, 
that  He  was  all  that  we  are  and  something 
more  we  may  confidently  believe,  but  imtil 
human  nature  itself  is  better  understood,  and 
until  we  comprehend  more  fully  how  all  finite 
life  is  related  to  God,  we  cannot  have  an 
explanation  of  the  person  of  Jesus  that  will  be 
conclusive  or  satisfactory.  It  is  not,  in  fact, 
essential  that  we  should  have  such  a  definition. 
The  speculative  interest  in  the  person  of  Jesus, 
however  important,  is  only  secondary.  If  the 
worth  of  what  Jesus  offers  to  humanity  is 
made  to  depend  upon  certainty  at  this  point, 
it  is  evident  that  it  means  the  death  of  faith 
to  an  ever  increasing  number  of  people. 

Turning  to  the  New  Testament  it  soon  be- 
comes evident  that  the  speculative  interest  in 
the  person  of  Jesus,  that  is  so  prominent  in 
history,  is  by  no  means  uppermost  in  the  minds 
of  these  early  writers.  It  is  true  that  there 
are  some  traces  here,  notably  in  the  Gospel 
of  John,  the  Epistles  of  Paul  and  in  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews,  of  the  speculative  interest  that 
had  even  then  begun,  but  that  which  concerned 


36  THE  COMING  CREED 

the  first  disciples  most,  and  which  they  were 
most  eager  to  communicate  was  the  new  vision 
of  love  that  had  been  opened  to  them  by  their 
contact  with  Jesus,  and  the  incomparable 
spiritual  reinforcement  that  He  had  brought 
to  them.  They  felt  that  they  had  tasted  the 
purest  joy  that  a  human  soul  can  know,  which 
is  contact  with  a  perfect  love.  The  portrait 
of  Jesus  drawn  in  the  New  Testament  is  that 
of  one  whose  spirit  is  devoid  of  all  selfishness, 
and  -whose  every  motive  was  inspired  by  love. 
It  is  the  portrait  of  one  who  was  so  convinced 
that  love  is  the  master  law  of  life  that  He 
dared  to  base  His  conduct  wholly  upon  it, 
and  to  accept  cheerfully  all  the  risks  that 
were  implied.  In  His  refusal  to  make  use  of 
His  abilities  for  private  ends,  which  has  been 
the  common  principle  of  social  life  since  society 
began;  in  the  wealth  of  service  that  He  poured 
out  upon  inferior  persons  who  did  not  com- 
prehend a  tithe  of  what  He  said  or  did;  in 
His  willingness  to  admit  to  His  intimacy  all 
who  would  come  to  Him  and  His  refusal  to 
discriminate  in  His  friendships ;  in  His  patience 
with  those  who  mistook  His  spirit  and  who 
libeled  His  character;  in  His  suffering  of  in- 
jury without  retaliation,  and  His  willingness 
to  forgive  until  seventy  times  seven;  and  in 
a  hundred  similar  ways  we  have  the  evidence 
that  He  considered  love  the  only  thing  worth 


JESUS  37 

living  for,  and  upon  it  he  based  His  life.  The 
portrait  of  Jesus  in  the  Gospels  is  that  of 
one  who  "  offered  himself  everywhere  without 
expectation  of  return,  who  lent  himself  freely, 
hoping  for  nothing  in  payment." 

It  was  in  the  perfect  love  that  was  radiated 
by  Jesus,  kindling  their  own  hearts  to  love 
and  filling  them  with  an  unspeakable  joy,  that 
the  first  disciples  found  the  divinity  of  their 
Master  and  His  eternal  gift.  They  felt  in- 
stiQctively  that  the  perfect  love  of  Jesus  was 
the  outshining  of  on  Infinite  Love  that  is  at 
the  heart  of  things,  and  in  trying  to  express 
this  fact,  they  almost  exhausted  the  vocabulary 
of  their  age.  They  called  Him  "the  impress" 
or  the  "  image  of  God,"  "  the  first  born"  or 
"only  begotten  son  of  God,"  "  the  out-shin- 
ing of  the  divine  majesty,"  "the  word,"  "the 
self-expression,"  "  the  uttered  reason  of  God ;" 
and  they  declared  that  He  was  filled  with  "all 
the  fullness  of  God."  They  did  not  invent 
these  terms,  they  took  them  from  the  current 
Jewish  and  Alexandrien  thought  of  the  times, 
but  they  gave  to  them  a  new  meaning  and 
filled  them  with  a  new  divine  significance. 

It  is  evident  also  that  the  conviction  of  the 
disciples  that  the  perfect  love  of  Jesus  was 
the  outshining  of  the  Infinite  Love  was  in 
harmony  with  the  Master's  own  consciousness. 
It  was  in  the  love  that  welled  up  in  his  own 


38  THE  COMING  CREED 

soul  that  Jesus  found  the  surety  of  the  Father's 
love,  and  knew  himself  to  be  one  in  spirit, 
sympathy  and  intention  with  the  Father.  It 
is  an  interesting  fact  that  Jesus  never  offered 
any  proof  of  God,  other  than  his  own  con- 
viction, and  that  of  those  to  whom  he  addressed 
Himself,  and  He  never  offered  any  proof  of 
God's  love,  except  to  draw  the  picture  of  the 
waiting  Father  in  the  parable.  It  was  pri- 
marily in  His  own  experience  that  Jesus  found 
His  evidence  of  God.  Looking  out  upon 
nature  and  human  life  He  saw  in  the  beauty 
of  the  lillies,  the  color  of  the  grass,  the  feed- 
ing of  the  sparrows,  the  rain  and  sunshine 
falling  upon  the  just  and  the  unjust,  the 
providence  that  watches  over  the  unthankful 
and  the  evil,  the  faithful  shepherd  caring  for 
his  sheep,  the  good  Samaritan  nursing  the 
wounded  stranger,  the  kind  father  giving  good 
gifts  to  his  children,  and  welcoming  with  robe, 
ring,  feast  and  dance  the  returning  prodigal, 
a  great  beneficence  working  itself  out  on  a 
universal  scale  that  was  kindred  to  his  own 
experience,  and  with  which  he  felt  himself  in 
accord.  He  spoke  of  this  Infinite  Beneficence 
by  the  tender  human  name  of  Father,  He 
offered  Himself  as  the  revelation  of  the  Father, 
and  told  His  disciples  that  if  they  knew  Him 
and  understood  His  motives  and  character, 
they  would  know  the  Father.  "  He  that  hath 
seen  Me  hath  seen  the  Father." 


JESUS  39 

The  coming  creed  will  return  to  the  self- 
consciousness  of  Jesus,  and  for  the  mere  specu- 
lative interest  in  His  person  that  has  over- 
shadowed Christian  teaching  it  will  substitute 
a  moral  interest.  In  place  of  the  metaphysi- 
cal sonship  of  the  dogmas  it  will  put  the  ethical 
sonship  of  the  Gospels.  In  the  perfect  love 
of  Jesus  it  will  find  the  supreme  revelation 
of  the  Infinite  Love.  It  will  recognize,  as  the 
theories  of  other  years  utterly  failed  to  re- 
cognize, that  Jesus  translated  into  terms  of 
human  personality  the  very  essence  of  the 
nature  of  God.  Since  He  lived  there  is  no 
longer  need  that  we  should  discover  each  for 
himself  the  scattered  evidence  of  Divine  Love. 
They  are  brought  to  a  focus  in  His  character 
and  therefore  the  knowledge  of  God  can  be  at- 
tained most  easily  and  completely  through 
His  reflection  in  Jesus. 

In  the  coming  creed,  the  perfect  love  of 
Jesus  will  also  be  recognized  as  the  highest 
expression  of  human  love,  and  as  the  supreme 
ideal  for  all  who  through  Him  learn  to  love. 
In  teaching  His  disciples,  to  put  themselves 
into  the  same  filial  relation  to  God  as  He  did, 
Jesus  revealed  His  desire  to  give  to  all  the 
weary  and  the  burdened  that  which  He  had 
within  Himself,  to  share  with  them  the  riches 
of  His  own  inner  life,  to  help  them  experience 
what  He  experienced,  and  to  love  as  He  loved, 


40  THE  COMING  CREED 

without  condition  or  reserve.  Hence  the  true 
disciple  of  Jesus  is  the  person  who  is  learn- 
ing that  love  is  the  only  thing  worth  living 
for,  and  through  the  practice  of  love  is  enter- 
ing into  the  riches  of  the  life  of  God.  The 
church  that  Jesus  founded  is  a  confraternity 
of  those  who  are  learning  to  love  as  He  loved, 
and  the  society  that  He  designated  as  the 
kingdom  of  God  is  a  society  permeated  by  His 
spirit  and  bringing  all  the  affairs  of  life  to 
the  test  of  His  love.  "  It  was  as  a  bridegroom 
that  Jesus  came,  anointed  with  all  the  perfumes 
of  a  dedicated  love,  and  until  the  last  bitter 
hour  of  His  rejection  He  moved  with  such 
lyric  joyousness  across  the  earth  that  life  be- 
came festive  in  his  presence.  It  is  as  a  bride 
that  the  church  exists  upon  earth,  and  if  no 
festive  smiles  are  awakened  by  His  presence 
and  no  gracious  unsealing  of  the  fount  of  love 
in  human  hearts,  then  it  is  not  His  church,  for 
He  has  passed  elsewhere  with  another  company 
to  the  marriage  feast." 


V 

SALVATION     AS     A     CHARACTER     OF 
LOVE 


"At  the  root  of  our  conception  of  salvation 
lies  the  idea  of  God  as  essentially  self-imparting. 
To  Christian  faith  God  is  not  simply  the  sover- 
eign who  commands^  but  the  Father  who  loves, 
and  who,  because  He  loves,  gives.  Between  Him 
and  His  human  child  there  exists  a  kinship,  which 
even  sin  cannot  completely  obscure,  and  which 
makes  possible  the  divine  indwelling  in  humanity. 
— ^William  Adams  Brown. 


SALVATION  AS  A  CHARACTER  OF 
LOVE 

There  is  nothing  that  is  so  suggestive  of 
the  changes  which  have  overtaken  our  religious 
life,  and  that  of  the  society  to  which  we  be- 
long, as  the  significance  we  attach  to  certain 
words.  The  words  themselves  are  the  same, 
they  stand  in  our  vocabulary  now  just  as  they 
stood  there  centuries  and  ages  ago,  but  new 
meanings  have  crept  into  them,  old  meanings 
have  dropped  out,  and  they  have  a  very  dif- 
ferent effect  upon  us  from  that  which  they 
had  upon  the  men  of  other  years. 

The  statement  applies  to  our  religious 
phraseology  as  a  whole,  but  to  none  of  it  with 
greater  force  than  to  the  word  with  which  we 
have  here  especially  to  deal.  The  word  sal- 
vation has  been  all  through  history  an  integral 
and  vital  part  of  religion's  vocabulary,  but 
does  it  mean  now  the  same  that  it  meant  in 
other  generations?  Does  the  effect  that  the 
word  produces  upon  us  correspond  to  that 
which  it  produced  upon  our  fathers?  Does 
it  mean  more  or  less  to  us  than  it  meant  to 
them?  Does  our  conception  of  it  represent  an 
increase  or  a  decrease  of  spiritual  insight. 

In  the  early  stages  of  history  the  mental 
outlook  of  man  was  necessarily  very  different 
from  what  it  is  today.     The  forces  of  nature 


44  THE  COMING  CREED 

were  not  understood,  and  the  operation  of 
natural  causes  was  undiscovered.  When  such 
causes  were  not  recognized  it  was  the  universal 
law  of  the  primitive  mind  to  attribute  events 
of  every  kind  to  the  action  of  wills  like  its 
own.  Thus  there  grew  in  the  early  world  a 
great  fear  that  ruled  men's  actions,  created 
much  of  their  religion,  and  determined  to  a 
very  considerable  extent  their  idea  of  salva- 
tion. The  primitive  man  in  his  ignorance  felt 
that  he  was  in  the  presence  of  an  unknown  and 
hostile  power.  The  darkened  sky,  the 
thunder's  roar,  the  lightning's  gleam,  the 
volcano's  eruption,  sickness,  pain,  and  death 
appeared  to  him  but  the  anger  of  some  malig- 
nant personal  agency.  Hence  to  appease  the 
wrath  of  the  gods  and  to  purchase  their  favor 
was  a  notion  that  figured  prominently  in  the 
religion  of  early  man  and  in  his  conception 
of  salvation.  By  means  of  certain  rites  that 
were  supposed  to  have  a  magical  power,  he 
endeavored  to  soothe  the  Deity,  and  by  means 
of  animal  sacrifices  he  sought  to  obtain  His 
favor.  It  is  no  doubt  true  that  in  all  these 
sacrifices,  even  the  rudest  of  them,  there  was 
an  element  of  true  religion.  To  the  better 
minds  they  gradually  came  to  mean  an  inter- 
course of  giving  and  receiving  between  God 
and  man,  but  at  the  outset,  at  least,  this 
element  had  little  if  any   recognition.      Sacri- 


SALVATION  45 

fices  were  but  the  means  of  appeasing  the 
wrath  of  the  Deity  and  of  insuring  personal 
safety. 

This  feeling,  so  characteristic  of  the  early 
mind,  that  the  universe  is  hostile,  that  we  are 
beset  by  a  malignant  power,  has  clung  to  men 
with  great  persistence,  and  we  have  not  yet 
wholly  succeeded  in  freeing  ourselves  from  it. 
"  In  the  subconscious  regions  of  the  soul,  the 
past  still  lingers  to  persuade  us  that  ours  is 
a  demon-haunted  world,  where,  instead  of  God, 
the  Devil  rules."  It  is  not  therefore  surpris- 
ing that  religion,  through  all  the  centuries, 
has  been  colored  with  the  notion  that  salva- 
tion is  escape  from  God's  displeasure  and  from 
the  torment  that  his  wrath  has  prepared. 

The  theories  of  atonement,  for  example,  that 
have  been  given  such  prominence  in  Christian 
teaching,  that  represented  man  as  utterly  cut 
off  from  God  and  from  the  life  of  heaven  be- 
cause of  sin,  and  as  being  able  to  find  escape 
only  because  the  Son  of  God  in  pure  mercy  suf- 
fered an  equivalent  for  what  man  should  have 
suffered,  thereby  paying  man's  debt  and  making 
possible  his  escape  from  God's  wrath,  had  some- 
thing, manifestly,  of  this  primitive  conception 
of  God  at  its  background.  The  idea  of  church 
membership  also,  that  found  expression  in  the 
dictum, — "  Outside  the  church  is  no  salvation," 
was  built  upon  this  conception  of  the  primitive 


46  THE  COMING  CREED 

mind.  It  is  said  of  the  author  of  "  Lead,  Kindly 
Light,"  that  when  upon  the  verge  of  turning 
from  the  Anglican  to  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church,  the  question  that  bothered  him  most 
was  whether,  in  case  he  should  die  in  his  earlier 
faith,  he  would  be  saved.  That  Newman  was 
sincere  in  his  questionings  we  cannot  doubt,  and 
yet  we  are  filled  with  wonder  that  he  could  hold 
to  a  view  of  Grod  that  conceived  Him  capable 
of  damning  a  man  to  eternal  torment  upon  the 
score  of  the  difference  that  exists  between  two 
branches  of  the  Church. 

The  change  in  our  conception  of  salvation 
from  that  which  was  held  in  other  years  results 
from  the  fact  that  we  have  come  into  a  new 
state  of  mind  concerning  the  Unseen.  We  have 
begun  at  last  to  be  convinced  that  God  is  not 
malevolent;  that  we  have  not  to  escape  from 
Him  or  to  purchase  His  favor;  that  "He  is 
the  spirit  of  love,  brooding  alike  over  the  right- 
eous and  the  unrighteous";  that  the  chief  end 
of  life  is  to  allow  ourselves  in  childlike  trust  to 
be  ruled  to  the  uttermost  by  that  same  spirit  of 
love;  that  salvation  means  first  and  last  the 
union  of  our  poor  self  with  a  greater  and  bet- 
ter self,  a  finding  of  that  Highest,  "whose  wit- 
ness has  ever  been  in  us,  and  who  has  been  im- 
ceasingly  our  refuge  and  strength!" 

Coming  directly  to  the  heart  of  the  matter, 
it  may  be  said  that  for  us  salvation  means  es- 


SALVATION  47 

cape  from  self  rather  than  from  God.  It  means, 
to  begin  with,  escape  from  ignorance  into  truth. 
We  have  begun  to  realize  that  the  evils  which 
crush  us  are  exceedingly  varied;  they  are  phy- 
sical, mental,  moral,  social,  and  to  a  very  con- 
siderable extent  they  are  the  result  of  ignor- 
ance. We  must  know  the  laws  of  body  in  order 
that  we  may  be  well,  and  the  laws  of  mind  in 
order  that  we  may  avoid  mistakes,  and  the  laws 
of  character  that  we  may  have  moral  soundness, 
and  the  laws  of  social  life  that  we  may  dwell 
together  sweetly,  helpfully  and  peaceably.  The 
discovery  of  knowledge  along  all  these  lines  is 
what  is  meant  by  truth,  and  salvation  is  escape 
from  ignorance  into  truth. 

It  is  also  escape  from  unrighteousness  into 
right.  We  have  come  to  realize  that  men  have 
to  be  right  in  order  to  be  safe ;  that  salvation  is 
rightness  toward  God  and  His  laws,  and  that 
there  is  no  substitute  for  this  attitude.  If  an 
instrument  is  out  of  tune  it  must  be  made  right, 
according  to  its  laws,  before  it  will  produce 
melodious  sounds,  and  there  is  no  possible  cere- 
mony that  can  be  performed  over  it  that  will 
dispense  with  this  requirement.  What  is  true 
of  the  instrument  is  also  true  of  ourselves. 
Men  in  large  numbers  have  begun  to  perceive 
at  last  that  to  be  saved  is  to  become  right ;  that 
religious  forms  and  symbols  have  worth  only  to 
the  extent  that  they  help  toward  this  end,  and 


48  THE  COMING  CREED 

that  when  it  is  attained  all  laws  and  forces  are 
servants,  ministering  to  our  needs  in  the  most 
tender  and  wonderful  ways,  and  the  universe  in 
all  of  its  operations  is  a  friend. 

It  is  merely  putting  this  matter  in  another 
and  in  a  higher  form,  to  remark  that  salvation 
is  escape  from  selfishness  into  love.  The  deep- 
est word  about  salvation  that  was  ever  uttered 
is  the  New  Testament  statement  that  "  Every 
one  that  loveth  is  begotten  of  God,  and  knoweth 
God.  He  that  loveth  not  knoweth  not  God ;  for 
God  is  love."  The  selfish  theories  of  salvation 
which  have  allowed  men  to  become  absorbed  in 
the  thought  of  saving  their  own  soul  while 
treating  other  souls  with  neglect,  have  had  their 
origin  in  a  wrong  conception  of  the  character 
of  God,  and  of  the  spirit  of  Christ's  ministry. 
"  Do  I  love  the  Lord  or  no,  am  I  saved  or  am 
I  not,"  may  be  the  crude  expression  of  a  real 
religious  experience,  but  it  does  not  express  the 
Christian  idea  of  salvation.  The  coming  creed 
will  recognize,  as  the  creeds  of  other  years  have 
failed  to  recognize,  that  we  cannot  have  salva- 
tion independently  of  our  fellows ;  that  he  who 
would  take  it  on  such  terms  is  not  worthy  of  it, 
and  is  not  capable  of  receiving  it ;  that  he  alone 
whose  spirit  is  so  wrapped  up  in  the  welfare  of 
others  that  he  would  rather  suff^er  with  them 
than  to  know  the  bliss  of  heaven  without  them 
ever  really  discovers  the  secret  of  salvation, 
either  in  this  world    or  in  the  hereafter. 


SALVATION  49 

The  greatest  force  under  God  to  bring  us 
into  the  character  of  love,  which  is  salvation,  is 
the  message  and  spirit  of  Jesus.  It  has  been 
urged  by  not  a  few  in  recent  years  that  the  love 
of  God  is  self -evincing ;  that  it  needs  no  proof; 
that  it  is  written  both  over  nature  and  in  the 
thoughts  of  man  that  God  is  immanent  in  His 
world,  and  that  He  wells  up  in  the  hearts  of 
His  children.  It  must  be  remembered,  however, 
that  it  is  the  Christian  who  has  discovered  that 
the  love  of  God  wells  up  in  human  souls,  and 
those  who  are  most  deeply  conscious  of  the  im- 
manent love  of  God  are  those  who  have  come 
most  closely  to  the  teaching  and  spirit  of  Jesus. 

The  love  of  Jesus  is  truly  the  most  wonderful 
revelation  of  the  heart  of  God  that  earth  has 
ever  witnessed,  and  hence  it  is  the  greatest  force 
under  God  to  bring  men  into  the  character  of 
love.  His  love  was  not  only  constant  and  un- 
failing, sympathetic  and  comforting,  but  it  pos- 
sessed a  peculiar  quality  as  well.  It  was  re- 
demptive; it  transformed  its  objects;  it  raised 
them  into  a  new  Divine  character. 

The  love  of  Jesus!  So  vast  was  that  love 
that  He  craved  the  whole  world  of  His  brothers 
and  sisters  to  love,  and  God  gave  Him  the 
world.  Salvation!  What  is  it  but  to  escape 
out  of  ignorance,  unrighteousness  and  selfish- 
ness, into  a  character  that  is  like  that  of  Jesus. 
It  is  not  enough  that  we  should  talk  about  that 


50  THE  COMING  CREED 

love,  or  that  we  should  love  Him  simply  for  His 
love  to  us.  We  must  leam  from  Him  to  love  as 
He  loved,  manifesting  the  same  gracious  spirit 
in  word  and  deed,  forbearance  and  forgiveness, 
in  consecration  and  service. 

So  tender  was  His  love  to  us 

We  had  not  learned  to  love  before, 

That  we  grow  like  to  Him,  and  thus 

Men  sought  His  grace  in  us  once  more." 


VI 

THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD  AS  THE  SWAY 
OF  LOVE 


"  What  then  is  the  service  rendered  to  the 
world  by  Christianity  ?  The  proclamation  of 
"good  news."  And  what  is  this  good  news?  The 
pardon  of  sin.  The  God  of  holiness  loving  the 
world  and  reconciling  it  to  himself  in  Jesus,  in 
order  to  establish  the  Kingdom  of  God,  the  city 
of  souls,  the  life  of  heaven  upon  earth.  There 
you  have  the  whole  of  it;  but  in  this  is  a  revolu- 

*^°°-  "  — Amiel. 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD  AS  THE  SWAY 
OF  LOVE 

One  of  the  words  most  frequently  upon  the 
lips  of  Jesus  was  the  word  kingdom.  It  was 
the  keynote  of  His  most  important  teachings. 
In  the  first  three  Gospels,  which  probably  repre- 
sent most  nearly  the  Master's  point  of  view, 
the  allusions  to  the  "  kingdom  of  God  "  or  the 
"  kingdom  of  heaven  "  find  constant  repetition. 
It  is  said  that  Jesus  began  His  ministry  by  de- 
daring  that  the  "  kingdom  of  God  is  at  hand," 
and  He  is  reported  to  have  traveled  throughout 
the  villages  and  cities  of  Palestine  preaching 
the  good  news  of  the  kingdom.  His  parables, 
which  are  the  pictures  of  the  New  Testament, 
were  spoken  largely  for  the  purpose  of  illus- 
trating the  spirit  of  the  kingdom.  The  word 
evidently  was  intended  to  signify  a  corporate 
union  of  individuals  such  as  is  covered  by  our 
word  society.  There  was  no  other  word  at  that 
time  which  so  well  expressed  the  idea  that  He 
wished  to  convey.  He  might  with  equal  accu- 
racy have  spoken  of  the  republic  or  the  com- 
monwealth of  God.  The  word  kingdom  is 
used  because  there  was  no  other  idea  of  society 
that  was  current  among  those  whom  He  ad- 
dressed. 

The  importance  which  He  attached  to  the 
idea  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  He  urged  His 
53 


64  THE  COMING  CREED 

disciples  to  seek  first  the  "  kingdom  of  God." 
There  is  perhaps  no  other  point  at  which 
Christian  teaching  has  so  signally  failed  as  in 
the  way  it  has  dealt  with  this  fundamental 
truth  of  the  Christian  message.  It  is  hardly 
too  much  to  claim  that  the  greatest  triumph 
of  the  coming  creed  will  be  the  rediscovery  and 
reinterpretation  of  the  mind  of  Christ  in  refer- 
ence to  the  "  kingdom  of  God." 

We  have  to  observe  at  the  outset  how  this 
teaching  of  Jesus  has  been  understood  by  His 
disciples,  and  how  it  has  been  represented  by 
the  church.  For  centuries  after  the  death  of 
Jesus  the  chief  thought  of  His  disciples  was 
that  He  would  come  again  in  a  visible  way  and 
with  power,  and  that  by  miracle  He  would  de- 
stroy the  unbelieving  world  and  establish  the 
kingdom  of  God.  The  "day  of  the  Lord" 
when  Christ  would  appear  in  the  clouds  to  con- 
found and  to  overthrow  the  unbelieving  world, 
and  to  inaugurate  the  kingdom  was  the  great 
note  of  early  Christian  expectation.  However, 
as  the  long  centuries  wore  themselves  out  and 
this  hope  was  not  realized  another  idea  began 
to  emerge  and  to  find  a  place  in  Christian 
thought.  It  was  the  idea  that  the  main  busi- 
ness of  the  church  is  to  get  men  ready  to  die, 
and  to  prepare  them  for  the  life  of  heaven. 
This  thought  gradually  gathered  force,  and 
for  centuries  it  has  been    uppermost    in    the 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD  55 

Christian  mind.  The  organization  and  direc- 
tion of  Christian  activity  have  proceeded  very 
largely  upon  this  assumption.  The  world  has 
been  esteemed  a  wreck  and  Christian  service  has 
had  for  its  object  to  save  as  many  as  possible 
therefrom. 

That  this  "other  worldliness"  which  has 
characterized  the  Christian  body  has  issued  in- 
directly in  many  good  results  to  society  can 
hardly  be  questioned.  It  has  been  a  splendid 
protest  against  excessive  devotion  to  this  world, 
and  it  has  been  accompanied  by  tidal  waves  of 
sympathy  which  have  done  much  to  enrich  hu- 
man lives  in  countless  ways.  The  fact  cannot 
be  overlooked  that  Christian  teaching,  in  spite 
of  its  extreme  emphasis  upon  the  life  to  come, 
has  done  much  to  alleviate  the  condition  of  the 
weak  and  unfortunate,  to  bestow  honor  upon 
womanhood,  to  bring  safety  to  little  children, 
to  fill  the  hearts  of  men  with  trust,  and  to  com- 
fort them  in  trouble,  failure  and  misfortune. 
Yet  in  view  of  the  social  conditions  that  still 
prevail,  even  in  the  so-called  Christian  coun- 
tries, it  is  a  fair  question  whether  the  failure 
of  Christian  teaching  to  properly  interpret  and 
emphasize  Christ's  ideal  of  the  kingdom  has 
not  proved  a  serious  hindrance  to  the  work  of 
social  reclamation  and  reconstruction. 

That  Christ  was  not  thinking  primarily  of 
the  life  after  death  by  his  oft-repeated  refer- 


56  THE  COMING  CREED 

ence  to  the  "kingdom  of  God"  or  the  "king- 
dom of  heaven  "  is  shown  by  His  declarations 
that  the  "  kingdom  is  at  hand,"  and  that  it  is 
here  in  the  midst  of  the  world.  What  He  evi- 
dently meant  thereby  was  the  sway  of  God 
here  and  now.  When  He  told  the  disciples  that 
they  were  to  seek  the  "  kingdom  of  God,"  He 
meant  that  they  were  to  seek  the  enthronement 
of  God's  truth  and  right.  He  meant  that  they 
were  to  seek  the  re-establishment  of  the  social 
life  upon  a  basis  of  mutual  sympathy  and  ser- 
vice rather  than  upon  a  basis  of  self-interest; 
the  creation  of  a  brotherhood  in  which  all  men 
should  be  united  in  Godly  fear,  in  brotherly 
hopes  and  aims,  in  the  effort  to  convert  society 
into  a  great  fraternity,  and  to  innoculate  all 
human  conditions  with  the  spirit  of  good  will. 

Love  even  your  enemies.  He  said  to  the  first 
disciples ;  "  bless  them  that  curse  you,  do  good 
to  them  that  hate  you,  and  pray  for  them  that 
despitefuUy  use  you,  and  persecute  you;  that 
ye  may  be  children  of  your  Father  which  is  in 
heaven;  for  He  maketh  His  sun  to  rise  upon 
the  evil  and  the  good,  and  sendeth  His  rain  upon 
the  just  and  the  unjust."  In  other  words,  the 
great  determining  law  of  the  kingdom  is  love. 
Not  in  the  sense,  perhaps,  in  which  we  often 
use  the  term,  but  in  the  sense  of  good  will.  This 
attitude  toward  others  does  not,  of  course,  pre- 
clude the  disciple  from  those  personal  intima- 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD  67 

cies  which  constitute  so  much  of  life.  Every 
man,  for  example,  is  not  called  upon  to  love  his 
neighbor's  child  in  the  same  way  that  he  loves 
his  own.  What  Christ  really  demands  is  that 
each  one  shall  recognize  his  kinship  with  all 
the  rest  of  the  Father's  children,  and  that  he 
shall  endeavor  to  do  for  each  the  real  best, 
although  it  may  not  always  be  what  his  brother 
thinks  is  best,  and  wherever  this  is  done  the 
kingdom  of  God  has  come. 

It  is  commonly  assumed  that  the  great  evil 
of  life  is  sin,  but  that  was  not  Christ's  view. 
To  Him  the  great  evil  is  want  of  love.  He 
reached  down  to  the  fundamental  truth  that 
sin  at  its  bottom  is  selfishness,  and  that  all  the 
disturbing  evils  of  the  world  spring  from  the 
same  fundamental  source.  The  cure  that. 
Christ  offered  for  selfishness,  and  for  Him  there 
is  no  other  cure,  is  love. 

To  promote  the  sway  of  good  will,  and  to  re- 
organize the  social  order  upon  it,  was  the  es- 
sential mission  of  Jesus.  His  method  was  to 
make  disciples  by  talking  with  people,  by  im- 
pressing upon  them  His  own  spirit,  and  by 
sending  them  forth  to  make  disciples  of  their 
fellows.  Jesus  reckoned  upon  the  fact  that 
goodness  is  contagious,  that  love  tends  to  dif- 
fuse itself,  and  that  men  cannot  possess  it  with- 
out imparting  it.  He  knew  that  when  men  had 
come  to  share  His  spirit,  and  had  felt  the  thrill 


58        ^     THE  COMING  CREED 

of  His  love,  they  would  do  as  He  did,  and  that 
they  would  go  to  others  with  the  message  of 
life,  and  He  trusted  to  this  alone  to  establish 
at  last  the  sway  of  love. 

There  are  not  a  few  to-day  to  whom  it  seems 
that  the  Christian  ideal  has  proved  inadequate, 
but  it  is  perhaps  nearer  the  truth  to  say  that  it 
has  not  yet  been  put  to  the  crucial  test.  To 
the  complaint  that  as  a  force  to  redeem  society 
Christianity  has  failed,  it  may  fairly  be  an- 
swered that  on  the  contrary  it  has  never  yet 
been  tried.  The  failure  of  the  Christian  body 
to  make  the  sway  of  love  its  great  objective, 
and  the  substitution  of  institutionalism  for  the 
personal  and  vital  methods  of  Jesus  have  un- 
doubtedly stood  in  the  way  of  a  thorough-going 
application  of  the  Christian  ideal.  What  is 
manifestly  needed  at  the  present  moment  is  for 
each  congregation  of  Christian  disciples  to  be- 
gin in  its  own  humble  sphere  and  way  to  exalt 
the  social  ideals  of  Jesus,  and  to  create  the  at- 
mosphere of  the  kingdom.  Instead  of  seeking 
primarily  to  increase  the  size  of  the  church  roll, 
and  to  get  people  ready  to  die,  the  first  effort 
of  those  who  follow  Jesus  should  be  to  create 
an  atmosphere  of  good  will,  brotherly  sympa- 
thy and  mutual  service.  Love  should  be  made 
the  watchword  of  the  Christian  fellowship,  and 
the  relations  of  men  in  the  Christian  body 
should  be  made  so  kindly,  so  gracious,  so  free 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD  59 

from  harsh  words  and  criticisms  that  the  spirit 
of  Jesus  may  find  ever  a  more  perfect  channel 
of  expression. 

That  a  great  movement  has  set  in  that 
means  the  ultimate  recovery  of  Christ's  great 
ideal  there  can  hardly  be  any  doubt.  It  is  shown 
by  the  constancy  with  which  the  Fatherly  idea 
of  God  is  being  set  forth  to-day  in  nearly  every 
branch  of  the  Church,  and  by  the  consequent 
emphasis  that  is  given,  either  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  to  the  principle  of  brotherhood. 

It  is  shown  by  the  growing  willingness  on  the 
part  of  Christian  people  to  recognize  that  all 
who  are  working  to  make  the  world  better  are 
laborers  with  Christ  in  His  work  of  salvation; 
that  every  movement  for  righteousness  is  a 
movement  of  God;  that  in  making  it  possible 
for  humanity  to  live  better,  by  doing  away  with 
ignorance,  sickness,  intemperance,  poverty  and 
injustice,  the  Christ  spirit  is  finding  expression 
and  the  "  kingdom  "  is  being  advanced. 

It  is  shown  by  the  new  missionary  interest 
that  has  come  to  the  Church,  and  especially  by 
the  motive  that  is  so  evidently  inspiring  that  in- 
terest, the  motive  to  bring  home  to  the  Father's 
house  and  love  the  children  who  do  not  know 
that  they  have  a  Father  and  have  never  heard 
of  the  inheritance  that  is  waiting  for  them. 
Slowly  but  surely  the  point  of  view  has  changed. 
Instead  of  the  idea  that  without  the  knowledge 


60  THE  COMING  CREED 

of  the  historic  Jesus  the  heathen  are  forever 
lost  unless  the  missionary  is  sent,  there  has 
come  the  feeling  that  the  service  of  the  weak  and 
the  ignorant  is  the  duty  that  love  owes,  and  the 
opportunity  that  love  craves,  and  the  result  is 
a  new  missionary  impulse  that  promises  much 
for  the  "  kingdom  of  God." 

Finally,  in  the  growing  appreciation  of  the 
fact  that  all  who  have  caught  the  spirit  of 
Jesus  are  missionaries,  is  shown  the  movement 
for  the  recovery  of  the  Christian  ideal.  The 
feeling  of  responsibility  for  the  conversion  of 
individuals  may  not  be  as  strong  as  it  once  was, 
but  the  consciousness  of  obligation  to  do  some- 
thing to  make  the  world  better  is  growing  day 
by  day.  More  and  more  the  conviction  is  find- 
ing expression  that  conditions  must  be  created 
that  will  make  it  easy  and  natural  for  men  to 
do  right,  conditions  which  will  impel  the 
thoughts  and  hearts  of  men  to  rise  toward  the 
highest  things  as  the  growing  plant  rises 
toward  the  sun. 


vn 

LOVE  ATTESTED  BY  SACRIFICE 


"  With  the  conception  of  God  as  one  whose 
very  nature  it  is  to  express  himself  in  humanity, 
there  is  given  a  profounder  conception  of  the 
atonement.  The  sufferings  and  death  which  were 
the  inevitable  result  of  Jesus'  life  of  fidelity  and 
love  are  seen  to  be  the  expression  in  humanity  of 
that  abiding  pain  which  the  sins  of  his  children 
have  ever  caused  the  Divine  Father.  The  cross 
of  Calvary  becomes  at  the  same  time  the  revela- 
tion of  the  heart  of  God.  *' 

— William  Adams  Brown. 


LOVE  ATTESTED  BY  SACRIFICE 

That  the  death  of  Jesus  is  somehow  related 
to  the  higher  life  of  humanity  and  to  the  pur- 
pose of  God  in  securing  it  has  been  the  convic- 
tion of  all  the  Christian  generations,  and  of 
this  generation  no  less  than  of  previous  ones. 
Beginning  with  the  first  disciples  Christian 
teaching  has  found  in  the  cross  its  most  ab- 
sorbing theme.  No  one  can  read  the  New  Tes- 
tament without  the  feeling  that  its  central  and 
most  conspicuous  fact  is  the  cross.  In  the  four 
Gospels  over  one-third  of  all  the  space  is  occu- 
pied with  the  story  of  the  crucifixion.  Many 
other  interesting  events  of  Christ's  career  are 
passed  over  with  slight  notice,  a  thousand  dis- 
courses are  never  mentioned,  but  His  death 
upon  the  cross  is  described  with  such  fulness 
and  variety  of  detail  as  to  make  it  clear  that  in 
the  minds  of  these  writers  it  was  regarded  as 
of  transcending  importance.  The  letters,  also, 
which  make  up  the  second  half  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament are  permeated  with  the  pathos  of  the 
cross  and  with  the  thought  of  its  everlasting 
import  for  the  human  race.  Is  it  not  very  re- 
markable that  an  event  which  at  the  outset,  at 
least  in  the  minds  of  its  participators,  was  re- 
garded merely  as  an  execution  and  the  carrying 
out  of  a  legal  sentence,  in  less  than  a  generation 
should  have  come  to  be  viewed  with  the  utmost 
63 


64.  THE  COMING  CREED 

reverence  by  a  vast  multitude,  and  that  this 
feeling  should  have  been  transmitted  without 
abatement  from  century  to  century  and  from 
age  to  age. 

The  explanation  of  this  marvel  is  to  be  found 
in  the  great  underlying  fact  that  in  the  death 
of  Jesus  there  broke  upon  the  understanding 
of  men  a  truth  that  for  ages  had  been  strug- 
gling for  recognition.  It  was  the  truth  of  an 
Infinite  Love  that  suffers  and  gives  itself  for  us. 
Through  their  own  experience  and  the  soul's 
inward  workings  a  few  choice  souls  had  long 
since  begun  to  feel  that  sacrifice  is  the  condition 
of  all  human  progress,  and  that  somehow  this 
element  is  rooted  in  the  nature  of  things  and  in 
the  heart  of  God.  The  sunlight  falls  upon  the 
mountain  peaks  before  it  reaches  the  valleys. 
So  likewise  the  illuminations  of  God  are  caught 
by  the  greater  souls  before  they  are  manifest 
to  the  race  at  large.  In  the  later  history  of 
Israel  the  conviction  that  vicarious  sacrifice  is 
the  condition  of  human  progress  found  beauti- 
ful expression,  notably  in  the  picture  of  the 
suffering  servant  of  Jehovah,  as  depicted  in  the 
fifty-third  chapter  of  Isaiah :  "  He  was  wound- 
ed for  our  transgressions ;  He  was  bruised  for 
our  iniquities;  the  chastisement  of  our  peace 
was  upon  Him,  and  with  His  stripes  we  are 
healed."  Whether  the  author  of  this  splendid 
passage  was  referring  to  some  individual,     or 


LOVE  AND  SACRIFICE  65 

to  the  suffering  of  the  nation  in  captivity,  or 
whether  he  was  merely  expressing  an  ideal,  is 
not  made  clear.  In  any  case  it  may  be  re- 
garded as  a  foregleam  of  Calvary  and  its  inex- 
pressible light.  This  truth  that  the  poets  and 
seers  had  beheld  in  their  visions,  and  which  had 
been  struggling  for  recognition,  in  the  perfect 
consecration  and  self-giving  of  Jesus  was  fully 
vindicated,  and  its  worth  for  the  life  of  the  soul 
was  forever  revealed. 

It  is  not  implied  that  the  devotion  of  Jesus 
was  a  conscious  display  of  the  sacrificial  spirit 
in  order  that  men  would  see  it  and  be  impressed 
by  it,  any  more  than  the  devotion  of  a  mother 
to  the  interests  of  a  disobedient  child  is  such  a 
display.  It  is  not  of  the  nature  of  self-effacing 
love  to  indulge  in  such  calculating  prudence. 
Love  gives  because  it  is  its  nature  to  do  so,  and 
because  it  esteems  it  supremely  blessed  to  give. 
Such  also  was  the  spirit  of  Jesus.  Rightly  con- 
strued the  New  Testament  affords  no  warrant 
for  the  idea  that  Jesus  was  actuated  by  any 
other  motive  than  that  of  passionate  yearning 
for  human  good,  and  His  suffering  and  death 
were  the  offering  that  love  freely  and  gladly 
made. 

Loving  men  supremely,  and  conscious  that 
His  love  was  rooted  in  the  heart  of  God,  and 
reflected  the  will  of  God,  He  consecrated  Him- 
self absolutely  to  the  work  of  revealing  God  to 


66  THE  COMING  CREED 

men,  as  He  knew  Him.  He  determined  to  es- 
tablish a  kingdom  of  God  based  wholly  upon 
love,  and  employing  neither  force  nor  fear  for 
its  support.  He  determined  to  magnify  and 
enthrone  in  the  hearts  of  men  the  holy  require- 
ments of  God,  to  teach  them  that  it  is  vain  to 
worship  God  with  gifts  and  sacrifices  while  af- 
fronting Him  with  pride,  selfishness  and  hate, 
to  show  men  what  God  is  that  they  might  un- 
derstand what  He  requires,  and  to  unveil  to 
men  their  secret  sins  that  they  might  be  led  to 
seek  the  Divine  mercy.  For  these  ends  He  pur- 
posed to  live,  and,  if  need  be,  to  suffer;  to  la- 
bor, and,  if  need  be,  to  die.  The  supposition 
that  the  death  of  Jesus  upon  the  cross  was  the 
chief  object  of  His  whole  mission  upon  the 
earth  has  no  basis  in  the  Master's  own  con- 
sciousness. His  great  object  was  to  found  the 
kingdom  of  God,  and  He  gave  His  life  in  the 
effort  to  realize  this  end,  because  in  the  struggle 
to  carry  out  His  life  plan  He  had  to  deal  with 
conditions  that  could  not  otherwise  be  over- 
come. Such  was  the  mind  of  Jesus  with  refer- 
ence to  His  life  work. 

Here,  then,  is  the  real  significance  to  hu- 
manity of  the  Cross  of  Christ.  The  cross  in 
Christian  thought  does  not  stand  for  a  piece  of 
wood  of  some  particular  shape.  It  is  a  symbol 
of  His  sacrificial  love.  Here,  too,  is  the  real 
meaning  of  the  atonement  that  Jesus  wrought 


LOVE  AND  SACRIFICE  67 

by  the  cross.  It  was  never  His  thought  that 
God  had  to  be  atoned  into  love.  The  teaching 
that  represents  the  cross  as  in  some  way  appeas- 
ing and  placating  the  Divine  wrath,  thereby 
enabling  God  to  be  merciful,  as  He  could  not 
otherwise  have  been,  is  the  clearest  violation  of 
the  consciousness  of  Christ.  To  the  thought 
of  Jesus,  God  is  everywhere  and  always  the 
embodiment  of  tender  love.  What  man  of  you 
having  a  hundred  sheep,  if  he  loses  one,  does 
not  leave  the  ninety  and  nine  and  go  after  the 
one  that  is  lost,  and  when  he  has  found  it  he 
lays  it  on  his  shoulder  and  comes  home  rejoic- 
ing? That  is  a  picture  of  God.  What  woman, 
if  she  has  ten  pieces  of  silver  and  loses  one 
piece,  will  not  light  the  candle  and  get  a  broom 
and  sweep  the  house  and  search  diligently  until 
she  has  found  it.?  That  is  a  picture  of  God^ 
A  man  has  two  sons,  and  one  of  them  leaves  the 
father's  house  and  goes  into  a  far  country.  He 
wastes  his  substance  in  riotous  living,  and  at 
last,  after  many  har ships,  he  decides  to  re- 
turn home.  While  he  is  yet  a  great  way  off  the 
father  sees  him,  because  his  eyes  have  been  fixed 
on  the  horizon  all  the  while,  and  he  goes  forth 
to  meet  him,  and  falls  upon  his  neck,  kisses  and 
welcomes  him  home.  That  is  a  picture  of  God. 
In  the  light  of  these  teachings  it  is  clear  that  to 
the  mind  of  Jesus  there  was  no  need  that  God 
should  be  atoned  into  love.  The  great  need  was 
that  God's  love  should  be  revealed. 


68  THE  COMING  CREED 

Knowing  God,  and  feeling  in  His  own  soul 
the  throb  of  Infinite  Love,  Jesus  lived  and  died 
that  He  might  reveal  God;  that  all  men  might 
come  to  know  Grod  as  He  knew  Him,  and  that 
they  might  share  in  the  wealth  of  His  own  inner 
life.  By  His  passionate  devotion  He  tried  to 
make  real  and  living  the  compassionate  love 
and  holy  requirements  of  God.  His  atoning 
work  consisted  not  in  doing  something  to  ena- 
ble God  to  be  merciful,  as  He  could  not  other- 
wise have  been,  but  in  revealing  and  interpret- 
ing the  heart  of  God. 

It  can  scarcely  be  doubted  that  the  real  signifi- 
cance and  glory  of  the  cross  have  been  greatly 
obscured  by  the  grotesque  and  impossible 
theories  of  it  which  have  been  so  universally  and 
persistently  held,  and  which  still  linger  in  the 
thought  and  speech  of  Christian  men.  Think 
what  it  means  that  for  nearly  a  thousand  years 
the  idea  held  its  ground,  and  at  times  completely 
dominated  the  thought  of  the  Church,  that  the 
death  of  Jesus  was  a  ransom  paid  to  the  devil, 
and  that  the  resurrection  was  a  kind  of  a  trick 
by  which  Satan  was  finally  defrauded.  Think 
what  it  means  that  for  nearly  a  thousand  years 
more  the  idea  prevailed  in  some  form  that  the 
death  of  Christ  was  to  pay  an  exact  equivalent 
in  suffering  for  human  guilt,  and  thus  to  sat- 
isfy the  claims  of  God's  justice,  and  offended 
honor.    Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  the  theories 


LOVE  AND  SACRIFICE  69 

of  the  cross  that  have  followed  each  other 
through  the  centuries  have  for  the  most  part 
been  of  a  character  to  obscure  and  to  nullify 
the  very  truth  about  God  that  Jesus  gave  His 
life  to  reveal.  The  doctrine  of  the  cross,  how- 
ever, is  one  thing  and  the  religion  of  the  cross 
is  another.  In  spite  of  the  theories  there  were 
many  in  every  generation  who  caught  the  spirit 
of  the  cross  and  gave  it  beautiful  expression  in 
a  devoted  life  of  self-giving.  It  was  these  who 
kept  the  Church  alive  and  who  gave  it  whatever 
real  power  it  has  ever  possessed.  Yet  how  much 
it  would  have  meant  to  the  Church  and  to  the 
cause  of  the  higher  life,  if  the  spirit  of  the 
cross  could  have  been  coupled  to  a  teaching  that 
was  adequate  to  express  the  truth  that  it  repre- 
sents. 

It  must  be  recognized  that  at  best  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  cross  is  only  an  imperfect 
striving  after  a  Divine  mystery,  but  the  coming 
creed  will  differ  from  the  creeds  of  other  years 
in  that  it  will  take  its  cue  from  the  conscious- 
ness of  Christ.  It  will  interpret  the  cross  as  a 
revelation  of  the  spirit  of  Him  who  lives  and 
reigns  at  the  heart  of  things,  and  it  will  see  in 
every  manifestation  of  sacrificial  love  the  un- 
veiling of  God.  God  was  in  Christ  giving  the 
law  of  life  to  the  world.  So,  also.  He  is  in  the 
True  Parent  giving  the  law  of  life  to  the  fam- 
ily; He  is  in  the  True  Teacher  giving  the  law 


70  THE  COMING  CREED 

of  life  to  the  pupil ;  He  is  in  the  True  Prophet 
giving  the  law  of  life  to  the  community ;  and  He 
is  in  the  generous  devotion  of  all  those  whose 
lives  are  laid  freely  upon  the  altar  of  service, 
who  are  bearing  heavy  burdens,  drudging  at 
wearisome  tasks,  and  enduring  the  strain  that 
cuts  into  life  with  cruel  strokes  that  others  may 
live. 

"  A  picket  frozen  on  duty, 

A  mother  starved  for  her  brood, 
Socrates  drinking  the  hemlock, 

And  Jesus  on  the  rood. 
And   millions   who   humble   and   nameless 

The   straight  hard   pathway  trod. 
Some  call  it  consecration, 

And  others  call  it  God.  " 

In  brief,  it  may  be  said  that  the  coming 
creed  will  stand  for  the  truth  that  sacrifice  is 
an  eternal  law  of  the  spiritual  life ;  that  its  root 
is  in  the  heart  of  God ;  that  its  expression  is  the 
religious  history  of  man;  that  starting  in  the 
lowest  forms  it  reaches  its  supreme  glory  in  the 
cross.  It  will  stand  for  the  truth,  also,  that  in 
"  drinking  the  bitter  sweet  of  this  cup  the  soul 
finds  its  uttermost  self;  that  along  this  path  is 
achieved  all  inner  progress;  that  all  the  hero- 
isms of  life  draw  from  here  their  inspiration; 
that  from  this  source  flows  the  power  that  re- 
deems the  world." 


VIII 
LOVE  AND  IMMORTALITY 


**  For  Love  is  stronger  than  death.  " 

— H.  M.  Alden. 

He  who  from  zone  to  zone. 

Guides  through  the   boundless  sky  thy  cer- 
tain flight. 
In  the  long  way  that  I  must  tread  alone 
Will  lead  my  steps  aright.  " 

— Bryant. 


LOVE  AND  IMMORTALITY 

The  most  familiar  and  yet  the  most  unfa- 
miliar fact  of  human  experience  is  death.  We 
all  are  agreed  that  we  must  die,  but  we  are  by 
no  means  agreed  as  to  what  death  is.  Multi- 
tudes in  every  generation  who  have  lived  their 
whole  lives  in  the  belief  that  death  meant  ex- 
tinction have  had,  perhaps,  as  next  door  neigh- 
bors those  who  have  been  entirely  filled  with  the 
thought  of  an  existence  beyond.  On  the  one 
hand,  we  have  the  infinitely  mournful  strains 
of  an  Omar  Khayyam: 

"  One  thing  is  certain 

And  the  rest  is  hes. 
The  flower  that  once  is  blown 
Forever  dies.  " 

And  on  the  other  hand  we  have  the  serene 
and  beautiful  faith  of  a  Tennyson: 

"  That  nothing  walks  with  aimless  feet; 
That  not  one  life  shall  be  destroyed 
Or  cast  as  rubbish  to  the  void. 

When  God  hath  made  the  pile  complete.  *' 

In  view  of  the  tremendous  evidence   of  the 
outward  appearance  it  is  not  at  all  surprising 
that  the  attitude  of  many  toward  the  life  be- 
yond should  be  frankly  negative.     "As  far  8is 
73 


74.  THE  COMING  CREED 

we  are  able  to  take  account  of  the  soul  it  grows 
with  the  growth  of  the  body,  matures  as  the 
body  matures,  and  decays  as  the  body  decays. 
Why  then  should  we  not  say  that  it  dies  when 
the  body  dies?  Life  gives  overwhelming  evi- 
dence of  the  mutual  dependence  of  body  and 
mind.  An  injury  to  the  brain  will  produce  an 
entire  change  in  the  mental  and  the  moral  life. 
What  then  is  more  reasonable  than  to  suppose 
that  if  the  brain  is  not  merely  injured,  but 
destroyed,  the  inner  consciousness  will  be  de- 
stroyed also?"  There  are  very  few  who  have 
not  at  times  been  influenced  by  such  reflections, 
and  in  every  generation  many  have  been  com- 
pletely overwhelmed  by  them.  It  is  true  indeed 
that  this  negative  mood  has  lain  heavily  upon 
the  modem  world.  Many  cultured  people  in 
every  land  have  come  to  feel  that  this  life  is  all, 
or  at  least  that  the  odds  are  very  much  against 
there  being  another.  The  tremendous  breaking 
up  of  traditional  beliefs  which  has  character- 
ized this  generation  is  responsible,  to  a  very 
great  extent,  for  this  feeling.  A  wide-spread 
loss  of  faith  in  religious  ideas  once  universally 
held  has  left  the  minds  of  men  open  to  the  as- 
sault of  appearance,  and  the  average  man  sees 
nothing  to  rebut  it. 

To  the  evidence  of  appearance  the  New  Tes- 
tament opposes  not  an  argument  but  an  expe- 
rience.    Its  answer  to  the  doubt  about  the  fu- 


LOVE  AND  IMMORTALITY  75 

ture  is  a  summons  to  live  the  life  immortal 
here  and  now.  According  to  its  ideal  the  dif- 
ference between  the  mortal  and  the  immortal 
is  not  made  by  death,  but  by  an  inner  quality 
of  life.  Jesus,  when  hanging  apparently  help- 
less upon  the  cross  was  just  as  immortal  as  when 
he  arose  from  the  grave.  He  had  some  inner 
quality  that  death  could  not  grasp  or  hold, 
and  the  assurance  of  the  New  Testament  is  that 
those  who  share  the  Master's  kind  of  life  are 
deathless.  The  promise  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment is  not  that  if  we  die  we  shall  live  again, 
but  that  if  we  live  in  Christ  we  shall  never 
die.  The  teaching  of  the  New  Testament  is 
that  all  life  has  its  laws.  The  liaws  of  the  inner 
life  are  as  real  and  as  insistent  as  the  laws  of 
the  outer  life.  Those  who  obey  the  laws  of 
health  have  a  right  to  health,  and  other  things 
being  equal  they  find  health.  Those,  too,  who 
obey  the  laws  of  the  spirit  have  a  right  to  spir- 
itual life,  and  they  find  spiritual  life.  They 
find  it  on  this  side  of  death  no  less  truly  than 
in  the  great  beyond.  In  his  life  of  perfect  de- 
votion and  self -giving,  as  well  as  in  his  teach- 
ing, Jesus  revealed  both  the  nature  of  spiritual 
obedience,  and  the  quality  of  life  that  flows 
therefrom.  To  share  with  him  his  obedience, 
says  the  New  Testament,  is  to  share  with  him 
the  fruits  of  obedience.  To  practice  with  him 
the  life  immortal  is  to  have  as  he  had  the  cer- 


76  THE  COMING  CREED 

tainty  of  immortality.  To  the  rich  man  who 
came  with  the  question,  "What  shall  I  do  to  in- 
herit eternal  Hfe?"  Jesus  replied,  "Sell  what- 
soever thou  hast  and  give  to  the  poor,  and  come 
take  up  the  cross  and  follow  me."  Devote 
yourself,  in  other  words,  to  love.  Give  your- 
self, your  days,  and  your  strength  to  the  claims 
of  love.  That  is  the  practice  of  immortality. 
Love  is  of  God,  it  is  rooted  in  the  Infinite  Heart. 
He  who  loves  abides  in  God  and  God  in  him, 
and  his  life  is  as  deathless  as  the  life  of  God. 

Thus  from  the  standpoint  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment immortality  is  not  something  that  is  be- 
stowed from  without,  as  one  man  bestows  a  gift 
upon  another;  it  is  something,  rather,  that  is 
developed  from  within.  In  modem  engineering 
it  has  become  a  familiar  feat  to  remove  an  old 
and  outworn  structure,  such  as  a  railroad 
bridge,  without  interfering  in  the  least  with  the 
traffic  or  hindering  the  trains  for  a  single  hour. 
It  is  said  that  a  few  years  ago  a  great  building 
which  was  occupied  by  a  daily  paper  was  re- 
placed by  a  modern  fire-proof  structure  with- 
out suspending  a  single  issue  of  the  journal. 
While  the  daily  work  of  publication  was  going 
on,  the  walls  of  the  new  building  were  rising, 
constructed  to  endure.  Little  by  little  the  old 
and  unsubstantial  gave  place  to  the  new  and 
permanent.  So  it  is  with  the  life  immortal. 
Here  in  the  midst  of  the  years,  in  the  midst  of 


LOVE  AND  IMMORTALITY         77 

life's  occupations,  pursuits  and  interests,  while 
we  work  and  play,  while  we  rejoice  and  sorrow, 
little  by  little  we  may  develop  within  ourselves 
the  elements  that  endure.  The  body  is  always 
dying,  it  is  ever  in  a  process  of  decay,  but  by 
devotion  to  Christlike  ideals  and  ends  we  may 
develop  a  quality  within  that  is  above  time  and 
change,  that  is  not  subject  to  a  process  of  de- 
cay, and  when  at  last  the  body  is  outworn  it 
will  be  laid  aside  as  we  discard  a  garment.  "If 
the  earthly  house  of  our  tabernacle  be  dissolved, 
we  have  a  building  from  God,  a  house  not  made 
with  hands,  eternal  in  the  heavens."  The  inner 
consciousness,  however,  the  real  self  has  not 
been  changed;  it  has  simply  been  transferred. 
"Just  as  the  estuary  is  a  part  of  the  sea  and 
leads  out  to  the  sea,  and  we  sail  through  the 
land-locked  portion  of  it  by  day,  looking  out 
upon  the  land  that  is  visible  on  every  side,  and 
then  we  go  to  sleep  and  awake  to  find  ourselves 
in  the  midst  of  the  ocean,  so  the  earthly  life 
that  is  lived  for  love  is  but  a  part  of  the  great 
eternal  sea.  Sailing  along  today  we  look  out 
and  behold  the  land  on  every  side,  and  then  we 
go  to  sleep  and  awake  just  as  naturally  as  in 
the  morning,  and  we  find  ourselves  upon  the 
boundless  ocean." 

Such  is  the  Christian  view  of  death.  Instead 
of  the  dread  tyrant,  which  art  has  pictured  as 
a  hideous  fiend  who  advances  brandishing  his 


78  THE  COMING  CREED 

ghastly  spear,  or  as  one  of  the  Fates  whose 
remorseless  shears  cut  the  threads  of  life,  the 
New  Testament  pictures  death  as  a  servant, 
whose  entrance  upon  the  scene  can  be  discerned, 
but  whose  departure  when  his  work  is  done  may 
be  predicted.  Curiously  enough  this  view  is  re- 
ceiving wonderful  confirmation  today  from  the 
very  quarter  which  in  other  years  was  supposed 
to  supply  the  evidence  for  its  refutation.  The 
further  observations  of  science,  by  demonstrat- 
ing the  continuity  of  force  have  shattered  the 
premises  upon  which  the  old  materialistic  argu- 
ments for  the  destruction  of  consciousness  were 
based.  If  we  can  turn  heat  into  motion,  motion 
into  electricity,  and  electricity  into  light,  but 
can  by  no  process  reduce  them  to  nothingness, 
what  is  there  in  the  nature  of  things  or  in  hu- 
man experience  to  justify  the  inference  that 
character  or  soul  force  can  meet  with  such  a 
fate?  The  broad  hint  of  science  here  is  that 
spirit  can  be  transmuted  but  that  it  cannot  be 
destroyed. 

Likewise  in  showing  the  universal  validity  of 
instinct  science  has  done  much  to  confirm  the 
Christian  view  of  death.  It  has  shown  that 
instinct  is  everywhere  the  prophecy  of  nature. 
Through  this  wonderful  power  the  young  ani- 
mal is  able  to  guard  itself  against  a  thousand 
dangers  and  to  come  at  last  to  maturity.  Each 
insect   and   bird   carries   with   it  some   instinct 


LOVE  AND  IMMORTALITY  79 

that  enables  it  to  meet  nature's  need.  The 
young  lark  following  its  instinct  commits  itself 
to  the  soft  air  and  it  finds  itself  borne  up  by 
the  receiving  medium.  The  robin  following  its 
migratory  instinct  reaches  the  sunny  clime  that 
was  in  this  way  foretold.  So  the  poet  defining 
death  as  the  summons  of  a  heaven-born  in- 
stinct beautifully  sings, 

"  I  go  to  prove  my  soul ; 
I  see  my  way  as  the  birds  their  trackless  way. 
I  shall  arrive!    What  time,  what  circuit  first, 
I  ask  not;  but  unless  God  sends  His  hail 
Or  blinding  fireballs,  sleet  or  stifling  snow. 
In  good  time,  His  good  time,  I  shall  arrive. 
He  guides  me  and  the  bird  in  His  good  time.  ** 

Is  it  credible  that  nature  in  dealing  with  the 
animal  world  has  shown  such  skill,  but  that  in 
dealing  with  man  she  is  a  bungler,  or  that  the 
Infinite  Creator  whispers  truth  to  wasps  and 
spiders,  but  that  in  speaking  to  man  He  seeks 
to  mislead? 

It  may  be  said  indeed  that  what  science  here 
offers,  does  not,  after  all,  amount  to  much, 
and  it  would  not  if  it  stood  alone,  but  it  comes 
as  a  reinforcement  of  the  New  Testament  con- 
viction that  true  character  is  stronger  than 
death,  and  that  the  development  of  inner  worth 
is  the  safeguard  against  the  power  of  death. 
It  may  be  that  on  this  side  of  the  grave  man 
will  never  gain  a    physical    demonstration    of 


80  THE  COMING  CREED 

what  is  beyond,  but  somehow  the  conviction  is 
unavoidable  that  in  his  perfect  devotion  and 
self -giving  Jesus  revealed  the  secret  of  what  lies 
beyond.  It  is  impossible  to  come  into  contact 
with  a  really  beautiful  and  noble  personality 
without  the  feeling  that  it  breathes  the  atmos- 
phere of  immortality  and  is  inexplicable  with- 
out it,  that  while  lived  under  human  conditions 
it  manifests  relations  to  another  and  higher 
sphere,  and  that  while  absorbed  in  the  interests 
and  occupations  of  earth  it  nevertheless  reveals 
an  order  of  existence  that  is  not  of  the  earth. 
It  was  once  said  of  a  distinguished  man  who 
recently  died  that  no  one  could  think  of  his 
spirit,  nature  and  career  without  thinking  of 
immortality.  That  was  pre-eminently  the  char- 
acteristic of  Jesus.  As  men  stood  before  him 
they  felt  the  presence  of  something  immortal 
that  issued  from  him,  and  that  was  inherent  in 
him.  It  is  because  of  the  life  that  he  lived, 
more  than  the  historical  proof  that  is  offered, 
that  we  believe  in  his  resurrection.  We  cannot 
escape  the  conviction  that  such  a  life  is  beyond 
the  reach  of  death. 

Those  who  live  self-centered  and  self-satis- 
fied lives  until  forced  by  some  bitter  experience 
to  think  of  death,  are  sometimes  wont  to  ask 
for  some  book  to  read,  or  for  some  argument 
that  will  prove  immortality,  but  we  have  to 
realize  that  immortality  cannot  be  proved  as  a 


LOVE  AND  IMMORTALITY  81 

problem  in  mathematics  is  proved.  "Life  comes 
before  belief  just  as  the  stars  come  before  as- 
tronomy, the  flowers  before  botany,  and  religion 
before  theology.  We  must  live  the  life  immor- 
tal in  order  to  believe  in  immortality.  If  we 
would  have  a  right  to  the  tree  of  life  and  if  we 
would  have  a  right  to  know  that  there  is  a  tree 
of  life,  we  must  seek  the  immortal  life  here  and 
seek  it  from  the  God  who  is  here,  and  seek  it 
through  the  channels  that  He  opens  for  us." 

"Add  to  your  faith  virtue,"  says  the  New 
Testament,  "and  to  virtue  knowledge;  and  to 
knowledge  temperance;  and  to  temperance  pa- 
tience ;  and  to  patience  brotherly  kindness ;  and 
to  brotherly  kindness  love."  That  is  the  prac- 
tice of  immortality,  and  it  is  from  this  that  the 
sure  conviction  of  immortality  flows. 


IX 
A  SUGGESTED  CREED 


**  Therefore,  come  what  may,  hold  fast  to  love. 
We  win  by  tenderness,  we  conquer  by  forgiveness. 
O,  strive  to  enter  into  something  of  that  large 
celestial  charity  which,  meek,  enduring,  unretaU- 
ating,  and  which  even  the  overbearing  world  can- 
not withstand  forever.  Learn  the  first  command- 
ment of  the  Son  of  God.  Not  to  love  merely,  but 
to  love  as  He  loved. 

— F.  W.  Robertson. 


A  SUGGESTED  CREED 

We  believe  in  God  as  the  source  of  all  love, 
in  the  sense  that  He  wills  the  good  of  all,  and 
that  wherever  love  is  there  God  is. 

We  believe  in  Jesus  as  the  supreme  embodi- 
ment and  revelation  of  love,  and  therefore  the 
perfect  Ideal  and  Lord,  for  all  who  through 
Him  learn  to  love. 

We  believe  in  the  Bible  as  the  book  that  most 
perfectly  sets  forth  the  love  of  God  as  the  guide 
to  conduct  and  as  the  secret  of  blessedness,  and 
we  cherish  as  sacred  all  writings  in  the  propor- 
tion that  they  do  the  same. 

We  believe  that  the  great  fundamental  evil 
of  life,  and  the  great  disturbing  force  of  the 
world  is  want  of  love,  and  that  salvation  both 
for  the  individual  and  for  society  is  escape  out 
of  selfishness  into  love. 

We  believe  in  the  latent  good  in  evil  men,  and 
that  it  is  our  duty  to  show  God's  love  (that  is, 
good  will)  to  them  even  when  we  rebuke  their 
selfishness  and  lack  of  good  will. 

We  believe  in  the  church  as  the  association 
of  those  who  love,  for  the  purpose  of  extending 
the  sway  of  love,  and  that  none  should  be  ex- 
cluded from  the  church  except  those  who  ex- 
clude themselves  by  the  truth  they  cannot  see 
and  the  love  they  cannot  feel. 

We  believe  in  the  kingdom  of  God  as  the 
85 


86  THE  COMING  CREED 

sway  of  God's  love,  and  that  to  seek  the  king- 
dom of  God  is  to  work  for  healthfulness, 
beauty,  intelligence,  and  morality  for  all  men, 
to  seek  justice  for  the  needy  and  oppressed, 
the  overworked  and  underpaid,  and  to  endeavor 
as  far  as  possible  to  reduce  the  terrible  miseries 
and  inequalities  of  the  world. 

We  believe  that  love  is  immortal,  that  those 
who  love  abide  in  God  and  that  God  abides  in 
them. 

This  creed  is  not  offered  as  something  to  be 
chanted,  recited,  or  imposed  as  a  test.  If  the 
foregoing  chapters  have  not  made  this  clear 
they  have  failed  in  their  fundamental  purpose. 
It  is  meant  rather  as  a  statement  of  the  princi- 
ples and  spirit  which  underlie  and  condition  a 
true  church  life.  What  the  laws  of  navigation 
are  to  the  sailor,  what  the  laws  of  music  are 
to  the  musician,  or  the  laws  of  mechanics  are  to 
the  engineer,  the  creed  should  be  to  the  church. 
Note  how  the  "engineer  in  planning  and  build- 
ing a  bridge  makes  use  of  his  creed.  He  does  not 
sing  it,  shout  it,  or  subscribe  his  name  to  it,  but 
he  builds  it  into  his  work.  His  entire  working 
belief  is  put  there,  his  convictions  about  cur- 
rents, wind  pressures,  leverages  and  arches  are 
embedded  in  his  work.  If  the  work  is  found  to 
be  good  the  creed  is  declared  sound." 

Thus  it  is  that  the  church  must  put  its  creed 
into  its  life  and  work.     Whatever  cannot  thus 


A  SUGGESTED^  CKEEDi '  i.  >  \  i  SM  :  /' 

be  expressed  must  be  thrown  out.  It  is  here 
especially  that  the  creeds  of  other  years  fail. 
They  are  largely  speculative  in  character.  They 
represent  a  plan  by  which  to  think,  rather  than 
a  plan  by  which  to  live  and  work.  They  could 
not  be  expressed  in  terms  of  life,  because  for 
the  most  part  they  had  but  little  bearing  upon 
life. 

To  many  earnest  Christians  it  seems  a  terri- 
ble menace  to  the  church  to  remove  the  dogmatic 
conditions  which  have  hitherto  been  insisted 
upon,  and  to  make  the  church  life  a  fellowship 
of  love.  There  is  need,  however,  that  such  peo- 
ple should  realize  that  dogmatic  fences,  like 
the  Apostles'  Creed,  and  similar  statements, 
with  which  the  churches  have  been  hedged  about 
and  protected,  have  been  restrictions  which  have 
been  imposed  upon  the  Christ  himself.  They 
have  operated  to  shut  the  Christ  out  because 
they  have  shut  out  a  great  many  sincere  posses- 
sors of  His  spirit.  There  is  need  also  that  such 
people  should  realize  that  dogma  is  always  di- 
visive, while  love  is  constructive  and  unifying. 
It  draws  the  souls  of  men  together.  Sectarian 
differences  will  not  long  continue  when  the 
churches  have  become  re-established  upon  a  basis 
of  love,  when  they  stand  pre-eminently  for 
brotherhood  and  service. 

Many  churches  have  already  taken  a  long 
stride  in  this  direction.     They  are  inviting  into 


8$>fX^     THE  COMING  CREED 

their  fellowship  all  honest  believers  in  goodness 
and  fraternity  who  find  in  the  historic  Jesus  so 
perfect  a  manifestation  of  these  principles  that 
they  are  willing  to  confess  Him  as  their  spir- 
itual master. 

This  is  a  long  step  from  the  theological  in- 
quisition that  used  to  be  the  test  of  church  mem- 
bership. However,  it  is  in  absolute  consonance 
with  Christ's  significant  parable  of  the  last 
judgment,  and  it  seems  not  unlikely  that  we 
have  reached  a  point  where  the  movement  in 
this  direction  will  begin  to  spread  with  great 
rapidity. 

For  a  church  with  such  a  spirit  and  with 
such  a  programme  many  earnest  souls  are  wait- 
ing. Good  men  do  not  stand  aloof  from  the 
organization  because  it  is  too  religious,  but  be- 
cause it  is  not  religious  enough.  They  see  it 
uncertain  and  hesitating  in  its  message,  con- 
cerning itself  with  what  seems  unreal  and  non- 
essential, weakened  by  its  divisions  and  rival- 
ries, and  they  cannot  fully  respect  it.  Many 
who  are  now  without  the  church  would  greet 
with  ardor  a  church  life  that  offered  them  the 
full  and  abiding  love  of  Christ,  that  took  no 
thought  for  itself,  that  dared  to  stand  fairly 
and  squarely  upon  the  principle  of  Jesus,  "he 
that  loseth  his  life  shall  find  it,"  and  without 
pretense  or  equivocation  was  a  fellowship  of 
love  and  service. 


U^IVEBSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRAKV 
BERKELEY  ^«KARY 


50w-7,'16 


YB  22103 


